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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 



Books by 
PHILIP GIBBS 

MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD 
PEOPLE OF DESTINY 



HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK 
Established 1817 



More That Must Be Told 



By 

Philip Qibbs 

Author of 
'People of Destiny" "Now It Can Be Told" etc. 




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 



.GcV 5 



©CI.A627705 

Moee That Must Be Told 



Copyright, 1021. by Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the United States of America 
K-V 



NOV 14 1321 



-wo | 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. Leaders of the Old Tradition i 

II. Ideals of the Humanists 50 

III. The Need of the Spirit 83 

IV. The New Germany 127 

V. The Price of Victory in France 175 

VI. The Social Revolution in English Life .... 213 

VII. The Warning of Austria , 244 

VIII. The Truth About Ireland 260 

IX. The United States and World Peace 339 

X. The Chance of Youth 370 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

i 

LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 



LOOKING back at the three years of history after the 
> armistice — three years of blundering, moral degra- 
dation, and reaction to the lowest traditions of national 
politics — the most tolerant of minds examining into the 
causes of that evil time must formulate a grave in- 
dictment against one company of men. Arraigned before 
an honest jury of public opinion, they are a fairly small 
gang of notorious persons, politically of doubtful charac- 
ter and shady antecedents. They are the Leaders of 
Europe — the Old Gang, still for the most part in com- 
mand of the machinery of government. 

These men in England, France, and Italy are those 
who were playing the game of politics before the war, 
fighting for place and power, taking their turn, now in, 
now out, according to the revolutions of the party 
wheels, but, whether in or out, belonging to the inner 
circle of that system which under the fair name of 
"representative government" arranges the fate of 
peoples without their knowledge or consent, and by art- 
ful appeals to popular passion and ignorance, by spell 
words and watchwords of fine sound and empty mean- 
ing, keeps the mob obedient to their directing wills, even 

I 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

though they are led to the shambles with the enticing 
cry of, "Dilly, dilly, come and be killed." 

It would be ridiculous now to re-examine all the psy- 
chological and political causes of the European war. 
That argument has been threshed out in millions and 
billions of words, in white papers and yellow papers 
and red papers, and in spite of the publication of secret 
documents from the Russian archives and the papers of 
other governments revealing the sinister game of bluff 
and bluster, intrigue and conspiracy, between the old 
courts of Europe, it is certain, if anything in history is 
certain, that nothing will ever reverse the verdict of 
guilty given against the German military caste for having 
planned, desired, and made the war. The German 
bureaucracy and bourgeoisie share that guilt by crim- 
inal consent, though the peasants and common folk 
must be acquitted on the plea of ignorance and their 
inability to resist the poison of false propaganda adminis- 
tered to them by their rulers and teachers. Let us leave 
it there — this terrible verdict against which there is no 
court of appeal except at the judgment seat of God. 

But the statesmen of Europe among the nations 
which ranged themselves against the Germanic power 
cannot be acquitted of all guilt, though they pleaded a 
dovelike innocence when the frightful challenge of war 
resounded through Europe and the armies moved to the 
fields of massacre. They were guilty of maintaining, 
defending, and intensifying the old regime of interna- 
tional rivalry, with its political structure resting entirely 
on armed force and as damnably guilty of hiding from 
their own peoples the inevitability of the conflict which 
was approaching them because of this grouping and 
maneuvering of forces. 

For many years before the war the conscience of 
people without power in many countries had been 
stirred by the spiritual idea of a closer brotherhood of 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

man, united by the common interests of labor and liberty. 
In France there was a growing revolt against the burden 
of militarism. The spirit of "La Revanche," any pas- 
sion of desire to recapture Alsace-Lorraine at the cost 
of millions of lives, had died down and almost out in 
the cold ashes of extinct fires. In Germany the Social 
Democrats, quite sincerely despite their betrayal after- 
ward, were antimilitarists and the advocates of inter- 
national peace. In England the people were so devoid 
of military ambition, so sure that war on the big scale 
had been abandoned forever by the great Powers of 
white civilization, that even when it happened they were 
incredulous, and like the countryman who saw a giraffe 
for the first time, said, ''Nell! ... I don't believe it!" 

The statesmen of Europe — English, French, Ger- 
man, Russian, and others — might have allied themselves 
with the new idealism stirring among the common folk 
of Europe. Some of them, indeed, paid lip service to 
those ideals of international peace, and with elaborate 
insincerity, smiling with cynicism up their sleeves, pro- 
posed resolutions at The Hague to restrict the horrors 
of war and to sprinkle its stench with rose-water. But 
mostly, and with intellectual atheism, they used the 
immense and secret powers of their governments to 
kill the pacifist instincts of democratic idealism, to break 
or buy its leaders, and to secure the continuance of the 
old game between courts and foreign offices for com- 
mercial advantages, military alliances, unexploited 
territories. 

These men of the Old Gang were at least no nobler 
than their predecessors through centuries of conflict. 
There was not one of them inspired by any vision of 
world policy higher than immediate material advantage 
or imperial aggrandizement. Not a man among them, 
seeing the shadow of a world war creeping nearer, ut- 
tered a loud cry to the conscience of humanity or any 

3 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

warning of approaching doom or any plea for some 
better argument than that of massacre. They were 
industrious with squalid bargains for the "undeveloped" 
spaces of the earth in Africa and Asia. From one foreign 
office to another went bickering notes, claims, protests, 
and threats. The Fashoda crisis menaced England with 
war against France. The Agadir crisis, twenty years 
later, was a challenge to Germany by England and 
France — a challenge voiced by Lloyd George, the 
"leader of democracy," in a speech which summoned 
up the dreadful vision of Armageddon as lightly, as 
carelessly as men might tell a fantastic nightmare 
across the dinner table as a warning against lobster 
salad. It seemed so to the British people, a little startled, 
but not shocked into the tragic consciousness that Lloyd 
George's message was the revelation of enormous forces 
assembling and getting ready for a conflict in which the 
youth of Europe, ignorant of that meaning, not told in 
plain words, not asked for consent, would be slain by 
millions, because the old men of the old regime were 
greedy for empire, on this side or that. 

It is easy to say that Germany was the wild beast of 
Europe, with devouring instincts, and that the other 
nations would have been a feebler prey, ready for the 
slaughterhouse, if they had been more weakened by the 
idealism of world peace. That is true. So is it true 
that in Napoleon's time France was the wild beast of 
the European jungle, and in other times other nations. 
So is it true that in England once there were seven 
kings at war with one another, and in Ireland sixty. So 
is it true that a century ago there were highwaymen in 
Hyde Park, and that for any slight offense or imagined 
insult one gentleman would challenge another and kill 
him, if gifted with great strength or skill or luck. The 
history of civilization is a gradual taming of the wild 
beast in human society, an education of human intelli- 

4 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

gence to a widening sphere of law and order and self- 
restraint. So it seemed, until the last war made a 
mockery of lawmakers and of gentlemen. The old 
men of Europe (not old in years, but in traditions) 
made never an effort to tame the wild beast in the 
heart of Germany (or in their own), never once raised 
ideals to which the German people might rise with a 
sense of liberty and brotherhood from the spell of 
Junkerdom. They made no kind of effort to get Euro- 
pean civilization out of the jungle darkness to new 
clearing places of light. They were all in the jungle 
together. A friend of mine with bitter cynicism com- 
pared the international politicians before the war with 
ape-men, peering out of their caves, gibbering and 
beckoning to friendly apes, frothing and mouthing to 
hostile apes, collecting great stores of weapons for de- 
fense and offense, strengthening the approaches to the 
monkey rooks, listening with fear to the crashing of 
the Great Ape in the undergrowth of his own jungle, 
whispering together with a grave nodding of heads, a 
plotting of white hairs, while the young apes played 
among the trees with the ignorance and carelessness of 
youth. 

That simile is an outrage upon the high intelligence, 
the fine manners, the culture and refinement of the 
statesmen who directed the fate of Europe before the 
war — men like Grey, Asquith, Delcasse, Poincare, 
Viviani, Briand, Giolitti. Yet outrageous though it be, 
if the European system were put into the parable of the 
animal world, by the spirit of iEsop or of Swift or of 
Lafontaine, it is with jungle life and with ape life that 
it could only be compared. 

During the war many of the statesmen of the coun- 
tries engaged in that conflict behaved with the virtue 
that belongs to patriotism and to the old traditions of 
national honor, I do not underrate that virtue or those 

S 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

traditions. In their time and when necessity demands 
them they call out the supreme qualities of manhood in 
all classes directly engaged. When once the war was 
declared and we were back again to the primitive con- 
test of nation against nation, there was no other way 
for honorable men than devotion to the life of one's 
people, the highest service of one's soul for the national 
cause, self-sacrifice even to death. In obedience to that 
last law of patriotism, youth, the best of European 
manhood, answered the call with illimitable courage, 
and an immense spiritual fervor never seen on such a 
scale in human history. Without a murmur of revolt, 
uplifted by enthusiasm, at least in the early days of war, 
the legions of British, French, Italian, Russian, and 
German youth marched to the fields of death and 
largely died. Different motives impelled them, differ- 
ent professions of faith were theirs, but on both sides of 
the fighting lines there was the one common primitive 
instinct that the life and liberty of one's people could 
be saved only by the death of the enemy. It was a war 
to the death without mercy, without chivalry, except in 
rare cases, on either side — the worst war the world has 
seen. 

II 

The old leaders of Europe handed over a great deal 
of their directive power to the military mind, which 
despised them with a traditional contempt for politi- 
cians, reciprocated heartily by those gentlemen who 
were impatient with the rigid self-conceit, the abrupt 
and undiplomatic manners, the complete lack of sym- 
pathy and candor among many members of the High 
Command. In all countries the politicians responsible 
for the civil organization of the state complained bit- 
terly of the autocratic methods, the intellectual narrow- 
ness of the military command. In all countries the 

6 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

High Command — German, French, British — accused the 
politicians of "betraying" them and undermining the 
chances of victory. 

Outwardly a political truce had been called in all 
countries. Party opposition had been silenced by Coali- 
tion governments in which all parties were represented. 
There was what the French called "L'Union Sacree" 
before the enemy. Secretly, and with but a thin camou- 
flage of decency, there were continual intrigues, con- 
spiracies, and plots among the various groups of po- 
litical personalities, aided and abetted by people of high 
rank and social influence. In France and England in- 
trigues were rife in the Cabinet and the War Office. 
Kitchener was beset by enemies in high places and low 
places intent upon pulling him down by fair means or 
foul. The early failures of the war, the ghastly mis- 
takes, the endless slaughter, called for victims. Every 
man in public life, and every woman of social influence, 
backed his or her fancy for the War Ministry, the Com- 
mander in Chief, the chief of staff", the army, corps, or 
divisional generals, and had a private personal alle- 
giance to this man or that, or a bitter vindictive grudge 
against him. There were cabals for and against Kitch- 
ener and Robertson, French and Haig, Fisher and Jelli- 
coe. Newspaper editors were invited to breakfast, 
luncheon, dinner, by ministers of state and generals of 
the High Command, in order to enlist their influence 
by subtle suggestions in leading articles, or personal 
paragraphs or open attacks, for or against the latest 
favorite or the latest scapegoat. Military critics, war 
correspondents home on leave, Parliamentary corre- 
spondents and lobby men, were favored by these danger- 
ous attentions. The press became a hotbed of favoritism 
and conspiracy. The commanders in the field, JofFre 
as well as French, Petain as well as Haig, endeavored to 
counter-attack the conspirators by forming their own 

7 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

bodyguard of political adherents, and directing the press. 
Colonel Repington, military critic of the Times, busy as 
Warwick the king-maker, was invited to Sir John 
French's headquarters and told all the secret history of 
the relations between the Commander in Chief and the 
Secretary of War. The war correspondent of the Daily 
Mail (at that time Mr. Valentine Williams, afterward 
a captain in the Irish Guards) was also a "white-headed 
boy" at the headquarters of Sir John French. The 
Daily Mail worked up a sensation about the shortage 
of high-explosive shells and attacked Lord Kitchener 
with a ferocity which for a while so angered the British 
public that they burned their favorite paper in public 
places — and then renewed their subscriptions. 

Sir John French's enemies were too strong for him 
after the ghastly failure of the Loos battle. Haig's 
friends triumphed; Robertson succeeded in supreme 
command when Kitchener was drowned, to the great 
relief of many patriots. Major-General Sir Frederic 
Maurice, on Sir John French's staff until his fall, was 
raised to a higher place as Director of Military Opera- 
tions on the Imperial General Staff, under Sir William 
Robertson. Then another set of intrigues went on, and 
never finished until the ending of the war. Asquith, 
hounded down by the Daily Mail and betrayed by his 
own supporters, was succeeded by Lloyd George as 
Prime Minister of England. Then Repington, the cor- 
respondent, wonderfully confidential with Robertson, 
Chief of the Imperial General Staff", in close liaison with 
Maurice, Director of Military Operations, conducted a 
long-range attack upon the new Prime Minister for his 
conduct of the war, and revealed the most jealously 
guarded secrets of the Supreme War Council. Haig in 
France, obstinate against the idea of a unified com- 
mand which would place him under the authority of 
a French generalissimo, conscious that Lloyd George 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

had little faith in his generalship after the enormous 
slaughter of the Somme battles and the still more fright- 
ful losses in Flanders, had his attention diverted from 
the state of his front to the political danger behind 
him. With Petain in command of the French armies, 
he was arranging plans which would keep Foch out of 
supreme command — a system of mutual defense which 
broke down utterly when the Germans attacked in 
March of 1918 and nearly won the war. 

Officers home on leave, hearing some of those rumors of 
intrigue and private rancor, could not reconcile the spirit 
of it with the marvelous optimism of public men — those 
very people — in public print. I remember dining with 
Lord Burnham in London of war time. I had come home 
on leave from the mud of Flanders, where I had seen 
the tragic slaughter of our youth, the daily harvest of 
the wounded boys. I had no notion that it was more 
than a tete-a-tete with Lord Burnham at the Garrick 
Club, so, coming up from the country and arriving late 
in town, did not put on evening clothes. It was a hu- 
miliation to me (more hurtful to one's vanity than moral 
delinquency) when I found a company of great people, 
including Sir William Robertson, Lord Charles Beresford 
(old "Charlie B.," as he was always called), and a 
variety of peers and politicians who were helping in 
divers ways and offices to "win the war." They were 
the people, anyhow, who pulled many wires of our 
imperial activities, knew all the secrets of the war on 
land and sea, and held in their hands the decision of 
peace, if there ever could be peace, which then seemed 
doubtful. My ears were alert to catch any words of 
hope which might be a reprieve to thousands of boys — 
those I passed daily on the Albert-Bapaume road and 
other highways of abomination — who otherwise would 
be condemned to death. These people knew whether 
the Germans were weakening. To them came all the 
2 9 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

reports of spies, the "peace feelers" through neutral 
countries, the secret views of our allies, beneath 
official proclamations and triumphant propaganda. 
God! Here I was in the company of those who held the 
keys of knowledge and the power of fate in this great 
drama of tragic history. 

They talked freely. One to another they kept the 
conversation going without a pause. Only one man 
was silent, and that was Robertson. I made out that 
the navy was not doing well. That the sinking of our 
ships by German submarines was more serious than the 
nation knew. (Not good news, I thought, for the boys 
at the front!) Haig seemed to be hopeless. His battles 
were bloody but indecisive. It was nonsense to make 
out that we were winning. It was mere folly to pretend 
that our losses were lighter than the enemy's. The Ger- 
mans still had immense reserves of man power. (So the 
optimism of our Chief of Intelligence did not cheer the 
company!) The French were troublesome again, letting 
us down deliberately, not working in close or loyal 
liaison, intriguing for supreme command. Our reserves 
were wearing pretty thin, in spite of the high percentage 
of recovery among lightly wounded men. The war might 
go on easily for another two years, or three, if the 
peoples did not break before then. ... I listened with a 
sinking heart. This was gloomy and dreadful talk, 
more gloomy than my own forebodings in miserable 
hours. Here was no hope for boys I knew who would 
be marching to-night to the line again, sitting again in 
the dirty ditches under infernal fire, praying with blas- 
phemous oaths for some miracle that would bring them 
a reprieve and peace. 

"Well, gentlemen," said Sir William Robertson at 
last, "you are all very pessimistic! All I can say is if 
we're a bit winded, the enemy is just as puffed. It's a 
case of who holds on the longest." 

10 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

One man there had written to the Times that very 
day ridiculing the German "peace" offers and pro- 
claiming our certainty of victory in the end. He had 
no certainty of faith at dinner that night, but spoke 
despairingly. Through all the conversation there was 
a note of querulous irritation against the men in high 
command, hardly camouflaged even against Robertson, 
sitting there with them, not answering their criticism of 
failure and loss. 

It was a rainy night, and dark in Garrick Street when 
I went out. A soldier home on leave lurched by drunk- 
enly and uttered a foul oath. Away in Flanders his 
pals would be listening to "crumps" and the whining 
of high velocities passing overhead and the hiss of the 
gas shells. The stretcher-bearers would be busy with 
the usual casualties — arm wounds, stomach wounds, 
gassed, the ordinary muck of a night's work in the 
line. ... I had no hope to take out to them. Our leaders 
were just carrying on, hoping for the odd trick after 
years more of slaughter. "Just a question," said 
Robertson, "of who holds out the longest." That was 
the highest hope of our highest Generalship! . . . And 
Robertson was right. 

Tragic history! Is it worth while washing so much 
dirty linen in public as that exposed to the vulgar gaze 
in the memoirs of Colonel Repington, Captain Peter 
Wright, Doctor Dillon, and many others? There is 
only one purpose to be served, and that was not, I 
think, Repington's purpose. It is to give a frightful 
warning to the world that the leaders who were respon- 
sible for the destiny of civilization in that time of 
monstrous conflict were unsafe guides, uncertain of 
their own way, distrustful of one another. They were 
but little men playing a game of hazard with millions of 
lives. They had, with few exceptions, no vision greater 
than the safety of their own jobs and the continuance 

ii 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

of their own prestige. These same men, long in power 
after all their failures, their intrigues, and their errors, 
proved themselves incapable of leading the way to new 
heights which we must attain unless we resign ourselves 
to a deeper sinking into the abyss of ruin. There was 
no spiritual light in them, not much of nobility, no in- 
spiration of genius. They groped and fumbled their 
way to victory which came by the valor of the youth 
that died, and then was worthless because of what they 
have done with it. They put out the best that was in 
them, but it was not good enough — not big enough, 
without virtue. 

in 

There never was a time in modern history when 
there was such a readiness for spiritual guidance among 
the peoples of Europe. Their guides led them into 
degradation. They appealed to the lowest instincts of 
human nature, and not to the highest. Deliberately 
they chose the lowest. 

It began with the Peace Treaty. That document, 
which, for a little while, had been the promise of a new 
great charter for the liberties of common folk in all na- 
tions, was discovered to be nothing better than the 
intensification of old hatreds by new frontiers, and the 
aggrandizement of victorious powers by the dismember- 
ment of defeated empires. Not deliberately, I think, 
but as a compromise of greedy interests in conflict, it 
violated in a hundred ways the principles proclaimed by 
President Wilson as the ideals of peace, and accepted, 
for a little while, by victors and vanquished. What be- 
came of the self-determination of peoples? Austria was 
put under Italian rule and Czech rule and Slovak rule, 
Germans under Poles, Turks under Greeks, Arabs under 
French and British. It was not a Peace for the rebuilding 
of civilization out of the ruins upon nobler lines, but a 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

Peace of vengeance, and a Peace of greed, and a Peace 
of hypocrisy. 

The old politicians who had played the game of 
politics before the war, gambling with the lives and souls 
of men for new territory, privileged markets, oil fields, 
native races, coaling stations, and imperial prestige, 
grabbed the pool which the German gamblers had lost 
when their last blufF was called, and quarreled over its 
distribution. The "mandates" obtained by Great 
Britain and France in Africa and Asia made the cynics 
phortle with laughter and the politicians of the smaller 
powers squirm with envy. Italy denounced them all 
as robbers because her share of loot was small. France 
was aggrieved with England because she had taken the 
lion's share. But the statesmen of Europe dividing 
the world afresh, and reconciling their spoils with the 
high words of justice and retribution, imagined in their 
ignorance of world conditions after a war of exhaustion 
that what they took they could hold, and that out of the 
ruin of their enemies they could gain great wealth. They 
did not understand then, nor after three years do they 
now understand, that not only all their own wealth was 
spent in four and a half years of destruction, but that 
all the former wealth of Europe, in all nations engaged 
in the conflict, had disappeared in shell fire and in blood. 

Not to them was it revealed that the paper money 
which circulated in European countries was but a re- 
minder of enormous debt, unredeemed and unredeem- 
able, and a promissory note on the future industry of 
peoples. No single statesman of the old regime helping 
to draw up the Treaty of Versailles had intelligence 
enough to see, or honesty enough to admit, that after 
the scourge that had passed over Europe, killing the 
flower of its youth, its young tillers of the soil, its 
laborers, only mutual helpfulness between one nation 
and another, former friends and enemies, could bring 

13 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

a chance of recovery and economic health. The com- 
plete ruin of Austria, condemned to death by the Peace 
Treaty, did but place a pauper population upon the 
books of the "Reparations Committee." It was just a 
hospital of starving children and a casual ward of adult 
unemployed, unable to buy from us or anyone, unable 
to work for themselves or us (because they could not 
buy the raw material of industry), just lapsing into 
decay and death, whose corruption would spread to sur- 
rounding countries. 

So little did the politicians know of economic laws in 
modern commerce, that they did not foresee the loss to 
their own trades in the closing of enemy markets, nor 
the futility of their own industry if there were no cus- 
tomers to buy their products. They did not even guess 
that by enlarging their imperial territory, in "man- 
dates" over races who disliked them, they were relying 
upon armies that could not be raised (unless we raised 
the dead) and wasting more millions of borrowed money 
in new administration, when their imperial treasury was 
empty except of unpaid debts, and the citizens of empire 
were already in revolt against the tax collectors. 

Yet we must be fair to the leaders of the old tradition. 
Looking at the Treaty of Versailles upon the plane of 
thought no higher than that of the statesmen who 
framed it — that is, as a document carving up Europe 
according to the old ethics of victors dealing with van- 
quished and demanding retribution and reparation, it 
is difficult to see, except in minor details of unnecessary 
injustice, how a better peace could have been made. 
The convulsion of Europe had been so great, the conflict 
so widespread, that the structure of human society 
everywhere had been immensely upheaved and no 
group of politicians thinking upon the old lines of 
thought, each trying to make the best bargain for his 
own nation or empire, and to secure immediate advan- 

14 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

tage without much thought of the future or the com- 
monwealth of Europe, could reconcile all conflicting 
interests, rearrange frontiers on reasonable lines, and 
safeguard the economic life of all peoples. Such an ideal 
arrangement was indeed impossible of achievement, 
owing to the geographical confusion of races and na- 
tionalities. Therefore all criticism of the Peace Treaty 
is futile, if it is conducted on the basis of the old philos- 
ophy of international relations in Europe with its balance 
of power, its rival groups, and the claim of the victor to 
exact the price of war from the vanquished. 

The hope which for a little while leaped up in the 
hearts of many people was for a Treaty which would 
give a new call to humanity and, leading it clear away 
from its old jungle law, would break down the old 
frontiers, demobilize armed force everywhere, and 
unite the democracies of Europe in the common interests 
of labor, liberty, and peace. Whether the peoples of 
Europe could have risen to such an ideal at that time is 
uncertain. The mere thought of "letting off" Ger- 
many would have aroused fury among the Chauvinists 
in France, England, and the United States. It is im- 
possible to say with any sure evidence whether the 
people of Europe would have been capable of rising to a 
height of idealism which, as we now see, would have 
been also good business on the most materialistic lines, 
as true idealism is always good business according to the 
old adage that honesty is the best policy, and the 
Christian precept, "Do unto others as you would have 
them do unto you." 

A mutual cancellation of our debts by a stroke of the 
pen in the Treaty would have been a supreme act of 
faith in the future of humanity which would have 
lighted the soul of the world. Yet in a niggling way, 
by the sheer impossibility of paying even the interest 
on those debts, or of extracting reparation out of the 

IS 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

ruin of Austria, and getting a healthy interchange 
of commerce, we are bound to come to that in the long 
run, without any light of splendid renunciation in the 
soul of the world, but only lamentation and recrim- 
ination. 

The rapid demobilization of armies in France as well 
as in Germany would have been another act of faith, 
helpful and glorious to the life of Europe. Militarism 
would have been dethroned, so that the purpose pro- 
claimed by us in the war would have been fulfilled. In 
a practical way it would have saved France more than 
she will ever get from Germany and helped her to recon- 
struct more rapidly the devastated districts which are 
still in ruins. 

A spiritual appeal to the German people, not based 
on threats of force, but calling with the voice of one 
people to another across the fields of dead, might have 
been answered by the offer of a whole nation to repair 
the damage they had done, to atone by immense self- 
sacrifice and service, because of the liberation of their 
spirit from hatred and from bondage to evil ideas in a 
new era of fellowship after the agony of universal war. 
On the plane of realism it would have been better busi- 
ness, for the Allies would have gained more by consent 
than they have gained by force, and the impulse to 
vengeance, burning and smoldering in the heart of 
Germany now, after so many threats and so much 
hatred, might not have existed, but might have been 
melted away in the enthusiasm of the new-found move- 
ment of humanity. 

IV 

Such idealism was impossible without great leader- 
ship, a spiritual leader so high in virtue, so on fire 
with human charity, so clear and shining in vision that 
the people of Europe would have been caught up and 

16 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

carried on by his call to the New World. If we had had 
such a man, I believe firmly in my soul that this would 
have happened. For at that time, immediately before 
the armistice, and for a little while afterward, there 
was a mass emotion in Europe, after the long agony of 
the years, which would have risen to any great call. 
Europe was stricken, shell shocked, hysterical. And it 
is by the emotion of peoples that great leaders are 
able to fulfill their aspirations. In millions of homes 
families were mourning their dead, aghast at the cruelty 
of life, hopeless except for a vague hope of spiritual 
revival. The women of the world had wept until they 
had no more tears to weep. The fighting men, no longer 
filled with blood lust, if any of them ever were, for more 
than the minutes of killing and terror, sick of the stench 
of death, contemptuous of the honors and glories of 
their job, cynical of civilization, looking forward to 
some new scheme of life which would prevent this kind 
of thing from happening ever again, were in a mood to 
abandon all the old fetishes of thought which caused 
this conflict, and to advance to a greater victory by 
which the beauty and joy of life could be recaptured. 
But we had no leaders to take advantage of that enor- 
mous stirring of thought and feeling among the people 
of the stricken nations so that they might have been 
lifted out of the old ruts. Alas! Alas! 

There seemed for a little while to be one. It was Pres- 
ident Wilson, the only man in the world who, before the 
armistice, wrote words which rang true in the heart of 
humanity. In dirty places where men lived under the 
imminent menace of death they were read, as I know, 
with hopefulness that here at last was a leader who had 
a greater vision than a war of extermination or a peace 
of vengeance. His words were like a new Gospel, or 
the old Gospel recalled in this time of hatred and mas- 
sacre. He looked across the frontiers of hostility, offered 

17 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

just terms to all warring nations, promised a new world 
to democracy if it would disown the evil of its ruling 
powers. Among millions of men, to youth being sacri- 
ficed, in millions of homes, death-haunted, on both sides 
of No-Man's Land, his words found instant response. 
They raised enormous hopes. They had a spiritual, 
almost a divine sweetness. The Germans, below the 
Junker caste, the German soldiers whom I met on the 
battlefields, whose letters I grabbed from lousy dug- 
outs or picked up as they littered the shell-churned 
earth, put their faith in Wilson, hailed him as the great 
arbitrator, accepted in their souls his terms of peace. 
I affirm that with absolute belief. Before the armistice 
they raised banners in many cities of Germany proclaim- 
ing their adherence to Wilson's "Fourteen Points." After 
the armistice for a little while, until one by one the 
Fourteen Points were abandoned or betrayed, they clam- 
ored for their fulfillment. 

I saw Wilson come to London. It was as though a 
savior of the world were passing. Miles deep the 
crowd stood and waited while he passed. Only the fore- 
most ranks caught a glimpse of his silvered hairs. But 
from all those vast crowds came a roar of cheers in which 
there was a note I had never heard before, and the eyes 
of people about me were wet with tears. So it was in 
Paris when he came. 

We all know now how he failed in many ways, why 
he failed — his hard, autocratic temper, so that even his 
advisers like House and Lansing were kept in ignorance 
of his acts and pledges, the vanity which made him 
weaken to flattery, the pedagogic quality of his brain, 
the fatal egotism which caused him to neglect the or- 
dinary safeguards of statesmanship — consultation with 
his people and winning of their consent, the right and 
liberty of their Senate and Congress. He had the 
greatest chance that any man has had in the whole his- 

18 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

tory of the world, and he missed it. But his people 
missed it too, by the bitterness of their political pas- 
sion, by desertion of their representative (who should 
have had their loyalty in this crisis of the world's fate 
in spite of all his errors), and by a cruelty which killed 
him as a leader and almost killed him as a man. 

All that is old and tragic history. There is nothing 
new to be said about it, but its tragedy remains, and 
makes more difficult the task of human progress which 
then was easier because of that mass emotion leaping 
up to hope. Quickly came disillusionment, cynicism, a 
hark back to material and selfish interests. The lowest 
passions of humanity were prodded up by the press and 
by the politicians. The noblest souls in England in all 
classes were sickened and dumfounded by the moral 
depravity of the appeals made to the beast instinct of 
the mob by ministers of state and all their sycophants. 
In the khaki election of 191 8, which gave Lloyd George 
a renewal of his power, there was the promise of great 
loot from the enemy's treasure and the Kaiser's head 
was to be the reward of victory. The ideals for which 
youth had fought in the war, at least the watchwords 
which had urged them to fight — the war to end war, the 
downfall of militarism — were flung away and forgotten. 
The material motive of making Germany pay for all 
the costs of war of all the victor nations replaced the 
better hope of establishing a lasting peace between the 
democracies of Europe. 

"Germany will be squeezed," said Sir Eric Geddes, 
"until the pips squeak" — a naked betrayal of Wilson's 
pledge to German democracy which we had counter- 
signed with our honor. Facilis decensus Averni. The 
people who were ready for spiritual guidance yielded 
when appeal was made to the brute in them. They 
share the guilt of this degradation and are paying for it 
now, but the greater guilt is that of men who, seeing 

J 9 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

the light, chose the darkness. The old leaders stand 
condemned. Theirs was the steepest downfall. 

The story of President Wilson is tragic. Yet he never 
hauled down the banner of his idealism, and, torn and 
tattered though it was after his single fight with enemies 
in front and behind, he nailed it to the mast with his 
crippled hand and never surrendered in his poor, dazed 
soul. He was faithful to the League of Nations, though 
his people would have none of it. In spite of their 
abandonment, weakened by the immense loss of their 
alliance, the League of Nations still lives and struggles 
in a futile way against unequal odds, and is a memorial 
of the spirit which created it as the best hope of the 
world. Even now it might become the machine by 
which youth could re-create the world. 



Greater than the tragedy of Mr. Wilson was that 
of the other signatories of the Peace Treaty, whodl, 
having pledged themselves to the League of Nations 
with the consent of their nations, mocked at it with 
cynical laughter, flouted its authority, undermined its 
purpose, and maintained the power of the Supreme 
Council, whose will and acts have been in direct and 
open conflict with the whole spirit of the League. 
They upheld government by force alone, whereas the 
League is based on government by arbitration and con- 
sent. They denied the rights of small nations to a voice 
in the councils of the world by declaring the will of the 
great victor powers enforced by standing armies. By 
sending representatives without authority to the as- 
sembly of the League, they deprived it of all reality in its 
decisions and of all influence in the settlement of world 
problems. They betrayed it. 

Tragic was the physical breakdown of Wilson, Presi- 

20 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

dent of the United States. More tragic was the spiritual 
surrender of Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England. 

It is hard for English people to speak or to write about 
Lloyd George without passion — passion of dislike or 
passion of hero worship. There have been times when 
most have hated him, but it is significant that the 
people who hated him once because of the things for 
which I and others liked him (his democratic audacity, 
his amusing vulgarity of challenge to the snob tradition 
of England) are now those who like him most. I hated 
him for his speech about the "Knock-out blow" at a 
time when there seemed no ending to war except by the 
extermination of the world's youth. I hated him after- 
ward for helping to arrange a peace which seemed to 
me to guarantee the certainty of new and more dreadful 
war. I hated him for handing over the fate of Ireland 
to men like Sir Edward Carson, Hamar Greenwood, Sir 
John French, General Tudor, and the gang of bureau- 
crats and brass hats in Dublin Castle who tried to 
break the spirit of a passionate people by methods of 
Prussian militarism, and tried to stamp out the Sinn 
Fein terror by a counter-terror which stoked up its fires, 
put murderous hatred in the heart of every Irish youth, 
made martyrs of those who died, and dishonored the 
old fame of England by an abandonment of justice, 
chivalry, and the spirit of liberty for which so much of 
English youth had died. For that I hated Lloyd George, 
and sometimes I think I hate him still. 

Yet analyzing my own feelings I find, as so many of 
his political opponents find, that not hatred, but admira- 
tion strangely mingled with regret, affection twisted by 
anger and annoyance, amusement causing laughter 
with a groan in it, are my dominant impressions of this 
amazing little man. The straight principles of honorable 
men are warped under his influence. They weakened, 
as I have seen them, visibly, under the spell of his babe- 
si 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

blue eyes. Men go into his room cursing him in their 
hearts, determined to resist his blandishments, reso- 
lutely fixed to arguments and facts and convictions from 
which they will not budge. In less than an hour with 
him they have resisted nothing, have budged from all 
their fixed points, and come out looking sheepish, smiling 
weakly, saying, "Marvelous!" Time and time again 
that has happened to trade-union leaders, political 
critics, newspaper editors, ministers of state, generals. 

I remember when he came out to France in the war. 
It was the time when our G. H. Q. was deeply annoyed 
by his way with them. Some of our generals expressed 
their loathing for him openly in their messes. They 
thought his visit was to spy out things, to make trouble. 
The least prejudiced were convinced that he would stop 
them from winning the war — though it was years 
afterward that the war was won and at that time any 
process of "winning" was not visible to impartial ob- 
servers. The inevitable happened. I saw it happen, 
and in private laughed. After a little while high officers 
were treading on one another's spurs to get a word with 
him, to listen to the words that fell from him. His air 
of simplicity, his apparent candor, his sense of humor, 
the keenness and alertness of his mind were not to be 
resisted by them. They were like school children in 
the presence of an inspired schoolmaster. 

Many people have had the honor of taking breakfast 
with Mr. Lloyd George at No. 10 Downing Street — 
(Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly!) It is 
a most dangerous hour to those who wish to preserve a 
detached judgment. When I had the honor once of 
being invited to this meal, I was very watchful of the 
little great man and his menage, trying to get some 
insight into the secret quality of his genius. There was 
no ceremony to impress the stranger, but a homeliness 
and candor far more impressive. Mr. Lloyd George 

22 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

helped his guests to toast. Mrs. Lloyd George — a nice, 
homely woman — poured out the morning coffee. Miss 
Megan came down in a hurry, said, "Good morning, 
Dad!" and attacked her bacon and eggs with the joyous 
appetite of youth. 

"How are things going in France?" asked Mrs. 
Lloyd George, with a motherly sigh for all poor boys. 

"Yes!" said the Prime Minister. "Dreadful mess, 
that last battle, wasn't it? Haven't heard a word about 
it from G. H. Q. First I heard was when I read your 
articles." Subtle flattery and pleasing to a war cor- 
respondent. 

He asked straight questions, listened (unlike most 
great men) to the answers, uttered indiscreet criticism 
of high persons, chaffed Miss Megan, passed his cup for 
some more coffee, groaned over the horror of war with 
honest emotion, laughed heartily over a comic tale of 
the trenches, discovered a point of fact he wanted to 
know — the reason for the invitation to breakfast — and 
indulged in a bright, uncomplimentary monologue about 
generals, war offices and newspaper editors, until checked 
by Mrs. Lloyd George, who said, "Get on with your 
breakfast, dear." 

Going away from that meal I had a glow of personal 
vanity. This man, holding the fate of an empire, almost 
the fate of the world, in his hands, had been glad to have 
my views. He had listened with bright understanding 
eyes to my explanation of facts. He had picked up a 
phrase of mine and repeated it to his wife. Is it easy to 
resist flattery like that? ... It is impossible. 

That candor of his blue eye, that frankness of speech, 
that readiness to alter his own opinion in view of a new 
fact — were they just a camouflage of deep cunning, 
artfulness developed into a natural habit? I do not 
think so. There is in the soul of Lloyd George still a 
certain simplicity, a boyishness, natural and unfeigned. 

23 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

At Walton Heath, where he played golf to keep him fit 
during the strain of war, he used to walk round a friend's 
garden with a friend's daughter — a chit of a schoolgirl, 
and talk to her in a comradely way, telling her funny 
things that had happened in Cabinet meetings, ridiculing 
the whimsical characteristics of ministers of state, chat- 
ting about state secrets as though they were the gossip 
of the village green. With a felt hat thrust sideways on 
his shaggy locks, an old suit amazingly baggy at the 
knees, and a gnarled stick like a country squire, he used 
to stroll into this house, as I have seen him, and discuss 
the situation breezily with a much closer realization of 
the stark realities than those whom optimism blinded to 
truth — yet never with any sign of weariness or despair. 

Once with Lord Reading and Albert Thomas, the 
French Minister of Labor, he came to the war cor- 
respondents' mess in France. That was a breakfast 
meal, too, and he was exceedingly vivacious. I noticed 
that he was a keen listener to one comrade of mine who 
has the gift of epigrammatic speech, and made a mental 
note of a descriptive phrase about the battles of the 
Somme which afterward he adopted as his own. So 
did Shakespeare use the best he heard, if Bernard Shaw 
is right. 

One other time in the war I met Lloyd George, on a 
night of great honor in my life, when Robert Donald 
gave a dinner to me and invited many high people to the 
board. It was generous of the Prime Minister to come, 
and he was gracious and kind. Henry Nevinson was 
there, I remember, an old friend once, and for a time a 
public enemy of Lloyd George. For Nevinson — as I tell 
elsewhere in this book — was a champion of the militant 
suffragettes, of whom Lloyd George was the arch antag- 
onist, and he had rebuked and ridiculed Nevinson with 
personal warmth. For other reasons this old comrade 
of mine, fastidious in honor, always a rebel against 

24 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

authority if he thought liberty were threatened, disap- 
proved of a Prime Minister, once a rebel of that kind, 
too, who enforced authority against free speech, con- 
scientious objection, peace propagandists, harshly in 
time of war. The Prime Minister held out his hand to 
Nevinson with a fine air of friendliness and pleasure, 
and only for a second, with a little extra warmth of 
color creeping into the ruddiness of his face, did Nevin- 
son hesitate before he took it. The Prime Minister's 
laugh was heartiest when the veteran war correspondent, 
alluding to my greenness in my first adventure of war 
(out in the Balkans), said that I did not know the 
difference then between a staff officer and a fool. 

I had to make a speech that night — an ordeal before 
a Prime Minister of England and such an orator as this 
one. Yet I kept my courage to the sticking point for 
the sake of youth that was being slain so wastefully, in 
such tragic masses. I wanted to tell Lloyd George the 
things that happen on a battlefield, the things happening 
in Flanders, every day, every night, in all the weeks and 
months of days and nights, so that he should think of 
the war not in the abstract, not as a conflict between 
great powers, but in its actual drama, as a shambles of 
boys and a world of human torture. I told him how a 
battlefield looked on the morning of battle with its dead, 
its stretcher-bearers searching for hunks of living flesh, 
the "walking wounded" crawling on the way back, 
falling, staggering up again, dropping again, the queues 
of wounded outside the casualty clearing stations, the 
blind boys, the men without faces, the "shell shocks." 
It was not I that was making the speech. It was the 
voice of the boys on the Western Front that spoke 
through my lips to this man who was, to some extent at 
least, the arbiter of their fate. So it seemed to me, 
speaking in a trance-like way. General Smuts was by 
my side and, though I had been talking with him, im- 
3 25 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

pressed by his clear judgment and human sympathy, I 
forgot him then, and all others at the table, and spoke 
only to Lloyd George. When I finished I was aghast at 
my own temerity, ashamed of the emotion with which 
I had spoken, but he shook my hand and spoke some 
words which told me that he knew and understood. . . . 
He understands and has great sympathy with all the 
suffering that the cruelty of life inflicts. It is because he 
understands so much, feels so rightly, that one is angered 
when often he supports those who stand for cruelty, 
oppose peace and reconciliation, and defend evil forces. 
I believe still that in his instincts Lloyd George is 
always on the side of humanity and good will, though in 
many of his acts he compromises with the spirit of harsh 
reaction, makes friends too readily with the Mammon of 
Unrighteousness, sells some quality of his soul for po- 
litical power, the safety of his office, and the advantage 
of immediate triumph. 

A great comrade of mine in the war, with whom I went 
on many strange adventures, used the name of Lloyd 
George very much as Louis XIV is said to have done 
that of his "brother" of England — as an irritant to the 
liver. This friend, an officer in the regular cavalry, 
typical of the English gentleman and officer of the old 
South African war time — a good type (perhaps the best 
in the world of its class and caste) but old-fashioned and 
limited in imagination and knowledge — put all the evils 
of England, and even the war itself, upon the head of 
this little politician. Lloyd George's revolutionary 
utterances, his Limehouse speech in which he outraged 
the aristocracy of England by coarse abuse and reckless 
libels, seemed to this cavalry officer the direct cause of 
all the strikes and spirit of revolt in Great Britain. 
His pro-Boer sympathies labeled him forever in my 
friend's mind a traitor. His friendship with Jews and 
financial crooks involving him in the Marconi scandal, 

26 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

"from which," said the worthy captain, "he only 
escaped by the skin of his teeth and the help of Sir 
Edward Carson," proved the moral obliquity of the little 
Welshman. His lip service to God and Nonconformity 
sickened my friend as the foulest hypocrisy. He sus- 
pected strongly that he was ready to betray Sir Douglas 
Haig at any moment, just as he had betrayed Asquith 
for the sake of the premiership, "just as he would sell 
the soul of his grandmother," said the cavalry officer, 
"for any dirty little trick in the political game." 

I used to laugh heartily at these tirades. Indeed, to 
brighten a journey up the Albert-Bapaume road or the 
road to Peronne, I used to mention the name of Lloyd 
George a propos of the day's news, rewarded instantly 
by a warning of England's moral downfall under the 
governance of a man who bribed the working classes to 
work, bribed them again when they struck work, and 
established the most inquisitorial system of bureaucracy 
under which any people have been stifled. . . . Lloyd 
George has gone a long way from the time when he 
could be accused of revolutionary and subversive action, 
an enemy of Capital. By slow degrees, yet very surely, 
he was drawn over to the side of the Tory interest. 
More and more he surrendered to the reactionary policy, 
the hard materialistic outlook and rigid traditions of 
Conservatives like Bonar Law and A. J. Balfour, Lord 
Curzon and Sir Edward Carson, and of financial im- 
perialists like Lord Beaverbrook, by whose under- 
ground work he had been raised to his high place. The 
Coalition government, founded in time of war to unite 
all parties in a national policy, became an assembly of 
tame politicians whose job was to vote solidly for any 
measure favored by the Prime Minister and his Con- 
servative backers — and solidly to lean their weight 
against any criticism or rebellion from independent 
members. There was no more difference between a 

27 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Coalition Liberal and a Tory than between two tins of 
canned pork differently labeled. They were men 
disciplined to obey the government, to flock into the 
lobbies like sheep at the crack of the government 
"whips," to defend every government measure as good 
and holy, to attack all critics as traitors to the country. 
Whenever there was a bye-election the Coalition Liberals 
were supported by the government machine, and blessed 
by Tory Ministers of State, while Independent Liberals, 
the last of the Old Guard of English liberalism which 
had once been the glory of the nation, of Gladstonian 
tradition, were crushed by this unholy alliance. 

The Prime Minister was the architect of this new 
political system which has done much to deaden the 
spirit of Parliament and to destroy its influence as the 
tribunal before which the national interests were argued 
and resolved. It could no longer be regarded as the 
safeguard of British liberty when the Cabinet possessed 
an autocratic power and moderate opposition was 
stifled by automatic majorities. It gave the extremists 
in the Labor world their best argument. "What is the 
use of appealing to constitutional government," they 
asked, "when the House is packed by reactionary 
forces, cleverly organized, unrepresentative of popular 
will, and antagonistic to all Liberal ideas? Direct action 
by strikes and threats of strikes, is the only method by 
which the right of the working classes may be enforced." 

Lloyd George, as many other great men have done 
in the past, identifies himself with the interests of the 
nation, and the interests of the nation with himself. 
"L'Etat, c'est moil" he says, with Louis XV. He is 
perfectly aware that, owing to his peculiar qualities of 
genius, there is as yet no other leader in England who 
can challenge him or take his place. He is unrivaled in 
oratory, in debate, in quickness of wit, above all in the 
knowledge which is the greatest gift of generalship and 

28 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

governance — when to attack and when to retreat. 
Always he has his ear to the ground, listening to the 
distant tramp of feet. Whenever it comes too near he 
gives ground, "according to plan," and then with superb 
audacity and a sure touch attacks his enemy in an un- 
expected place. He retreats with the greatest grace in 
the world, yielding the inevitable with a beau geste, as a 
generous gift. In debate his success is largely due to 
that. He grants so much of his opponents' argument 
that they are stupefied by his candor and disarmed by 
his chivalry. As a rule he states their side of the case 
with more persuasive oratory than they could dream of 
doing. He goes farther than they would dare. It is 
what he calls "taking the wind out of the enemy's sails." 
Then he breaks through their line of battle with "the 
Nelson touch" and destroys their last resistance with 
his broadsides. 

This is what he most enjoys. It makes him feel 
young and fresh. His babe-blue eyes glow with the 
light of battle. It appeals to that keen sense of humor 
which is a large part of his power and a cause of his 
weakness — a double-edged weapon. For it is his sense 
of humor which enables him to preserve his mental 
poise after years of intense strain bearing down upon 
him from all quarters. Anxiety, dangers, attacks from 
front and rear, leave him strangely unscathed because 
he has the gift of laughter, sees great fun in it all, a 
merry adventure. The pomposities of great gentlemen 
like Lord Curzon, the preciosities of Mr. Balfour, the 
conceits of Winston Churchill, afford him real amuse- 
ment, and when he is weary of Cabinet discussions, tired 
with high people, overstrained by the necessity of posing 
as the new Napoleon, he retires gladly to a little circle 
of low-class friends, and feels refreshed by their vul- 
garities, their lack of high morality, their cynical knowl- 
edge of life, and of him. He can take his ease among 

29 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

them with nothing to conceal, nothing to pretend. He 
knows their human frailties. They know his. They 
have been well rewarded by him, and hope for more. 
He likes their loyalty, their rich jests, their memories of 
old times when together they heard the chimes at mid- 
night. . . . Mr. Lloyd George will take his place in his- 
tory as the most remarkable Prime Minister of England 
since the time of the elder Pitt. It is possible also that 
he will take his place in history as the man who by sur- 
rendering his ideals at the time when the world was 
crying out for spiritual leadership helped Europe fall 
into moral degradation and material ruin. 

Yet time and time again during those three years of 
history his old instincts of idealism have revealed 
themselves momentarily. He made a bid for peace with 
the Russian people by which Bolshevism might have 
been defeated, but surrendered to Winston Churchill's 
military adventures on behalf of Kolchak, Denikin, 
Wrangel, and others, which consolidated the power of 
Trotzky, intensified the Red Terror, and broadened its 
areas of agony. In dealing with the problem of German 
reparations, he argued with the French government for 
a reasonable policy which would give Europe a chance 
of recovery and enable the German people to pay ac- 
cording to possibility. But he surrendered to the 
French militarists in their threat to occupy the Ruhr, 
acknowledging as he did so that if this "sanction" were 
fulfilled German industry would "wither" and with 
this withering all hopes of European regeneration would 
be quite blighted. 

He made fair offers of conciliation with Ireland, but 
frustrated all efforts of moderate men for peace by 
approving the policy of reprisals, strengthening the 
powers of the counter-terror, refusing to listen to all 
pleas for mercy, yielding all methods of statesmanship to 
the stupidity of "brass-hat" brains, dealing with the 

3o 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

Irish people, of whom 100,000 men had fought by our 
side in the war, and whose soul has been heroic through 
a thousand years of history, as though they were rebel 
"niggers" of a slave-driving power. Whatever peace 
may come to Ireland by the time this book is published, 
it will not be due to Lloyd George, once the young 
David who fought against the tyrant to liberty, but to 
men who so loved England that they could not bear the 
thought of her dishonor, as we were dishonored by the 
madness and badness of our acts in Ireland. The 
atrocious evil of Sinn Fein, the ferocity and cruelty of 
its guerrilla warfare, were caused by no peculiar devil in 
the Irish people, though the devil took possession of 
the worst of them, but by our long injustice, the falsity 
of our political leaders, the irreconcilable fanaticism of 
men like Sir Edward Carson and the light-hearted 
cynicism of men like F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead, 
Lord Chancellor of England. 

VI 

In the great crisis of English history, when, in these 
last three years, our national life has been in danger 
of ruin, and our empire itself is challenged by disintegra- 
tion and decay, we have had no good fortune in leaders 
whose wisdom and virtue called out the allegiance of 
their peoples. Is there any soul in England who believes 
in the wisdom of Winston Churchill? Not one, I think, 
in all the land. Wit he has, a bold spirit of adventure, 
courage, stubborn self-conceit, the cool audacity of a 
gambler who plays for big stakes, but no wisdom — no 
luck, even, except in getting high office. It was aston- 
ishing in the war how unlucky he was. Men with far 
less ability, poor dunderheads compared with him, 
blundered through to great success, or at least covered 
over great failure and gained high reward. But Winston 

3i 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Churchill had abominable luck which revealed his error 
of judgment at Antwerp. The evacuation of the Dar- 
danelles was a colossal revelation of failure. The Rus- 
sian expeditions which he encouraged and helped to 
organize were so bad that no one dares to tell the truth 
of what happened. He has the instinct of the gambler, 
and by a curious subconsciousness of mind speaks con- 
stantly in terms of gambling. I remember when I met 
him during the war he said several times, as though it 
were a fixed idea: "This war is the greatest gamble in 
the history of the world. We're playing for the biggest 
stakes." It did not seem to worry him that we were 
gambling with the lives of boys — the counters in his 
"kitty." After the great war we had "Winston's 
little wars," as they were called derisively by humble 
men. Mesopotamia was a gamble, too, costing us 
many million pounds a year when in England the 
overtaxed citizen was paying six shillings out of every 
twenty of his income to an imperial exchequer whose 
debts were spelled in figures beyond the imagination 
of ordinary men. It was a gamble for the oil fields 
of the East, but very hazardous and costly, and so 
far unproductive. 

I remember years ago waiting in Churchill's study. I 
had gone to see him for some interview and he kept me 
half an hour, so that I had time to examine the photo- 
graphs on his mantelshelf and desk. There were several 
of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, his illustrious 
ancestor and one of the world's greatest gamblers, ad- 
venturers, and generals. He was there as a youth, fine- 
faced, in full-bottomed wig, and when Winston Churchill 
came in I was startled by the likeness. In such a wig 
he would have looked like this, amazingly. In those 
days he was called "a young man in a hurry" and there 
seemed no limit to the possibilities of his career. He 
might have been as great as Marlborough, as un- 

32 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

scrupulous as he was, as fortunate. But it has not been 
so, though the chance seemed to be within his grasp. 
Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia, lured him, as other 
men have been lured by their old spell, but the days of 
empire are passing because of the exhaustion of men 
after a war of massacre, because the idea of greater 
empire has died within us and given place to new 
ideals. Winston Churchill has been gambling with but 
a few "chips" in his pocket, and the forces of evolution 
and of fate have been heavily against him. He is not a 
leader of the new ideals, but a man of yesterday, with 
to-morrow coming near. 

Where are the leaders of the new ideals? Are not all 
our leaders men of yesterday, in England, France, even 
the United States? Haphazard, I think of the leaders 
of England. Lord Curzon, so grave and pompous — 
"God's butler," as the Oxford undergraduates called 
their chancellor; Mr. A. J. Balfour, "dear Arthur," 
so perfect in courtesy, so philosophical in argument, so 
gracious in dignity of manner, so debonair, even now, 
with his silvered hairs, so hard in old ideas, so unbending 
to new needs of life, so intolerant of human passions, so 
cynical of enthusiasms and spiritual fervor, so stubborn 
in hostility to any new adventure of liberty; Chamber- 
lain, the counterfeit of a greater father, able as a bank 
manager, correct as an archdeacon, cold as a statue on 
the Thames Embankment, uninspired as the secretary 
of an insurance office, but honorable and upright. Who 
else is there that leaps to one's mind as one of the great 
figures of history in this astounding period of the world's 
fate? I can hardly think of the names of those who 
govern England beyond those I have named. Hamar 
Greenwood, the Canadian Jew, notorious and marvelous, 
certainly for the unblushing daily denial of anything 
undesirable in the administration of Ireland; Mr. Shortt, 
his predecessor; Doctor Addison, the author of pre- 

33 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

posterous failures; Sir Alfred Mond, the caricature of a 
caricature; numbers of little men, insignificant per- 
sonalities. . 

Sir Edward Carson, once a minister of state, for long 
one of the powers behind the throne of political life, 
stands out above them. In the memories of history he 
is sure of a high place. For he has played a big part in 
a big manner — the old style of melodrama — in the most 
evil character of recent history. He has stood con- 
sistently for reaction against all the influences of Liberal 
progress. He has been for fanaticism instead of for con- 
ciliation. He has defended cruelty instead of advocating 
kindness. Upon his head more than upon any other 
man alive rests the guilt of all that has happened in 
Ireland. When Home Rule was passed by the British 
House of Commons in 1914, he raised the banner of 
rebellion with the sign of the Red Hand of Ulster. Long 
before that Act was passed by a great majority of Eng- 
lish Liberals and Irish members, he carried the fiery 
torch among the Ulster people and with the present 
Lord Chancellor, then F. E. Smith, as his "galloper" 
and stump orator, beat up all the old prejudices of re- 
ligious strife, racial hatred, political passion. Pro- 
testing his loyalty to the King and the Flag of Union, 
he raised, drilled, and commanded a rebel army pledged 
to resist Home Rule by force of arms and to make a 
mockery of the Act signed by George V. By his consent 
and under his orders arms were smuggled into Ulster. 
They were German rifles and ammunition. By a Solemn 
League and Covenant he engaged the population of 
Ulster by oath to resist Llome Rule to the death, and 
deliberately, with fiery oratory, and with every art of 
inflaming passion, he set about the work of organizing 
civil war. 

It was only the Great War which stopped this one in 
Ireland, for the time being, but he was truly the author 

34 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

of that guerrilla warfare which has been waged by Sinn 
Fein against the forces of the crown. The Irish outside 
Ulster, the real Irish race, saw themselves threatened 
by the rising and arming of the Ulster volunteers. They 
knew the temper and purpose of these men. Some of 
them had seen, as I had seen in the back slums of Bel- 
fast, murderous assaults by Orangemen upon Catholic 
workingmen who were kicked to death where they fell 
under unprovoked attack. Some of them had seen, as I 
had seen, the march past of thousands of young Ulster- 
men, in military formation, well set up and well drilled, 
grim, resolute, spoiling for a fight. Some of them heard, 
as I heard, Sir Edward Carson's speeches promising them 
"victory." The Irish of the south and west waited for 
the demobilization of these men by the British govern- 
ment. The news that came to them was the resignation 
of British officers in the Curragh camp, who refused to 
obey the orders of the War Minister to force their sur- 
render of arms in Ulster. They began to raise their own 
volunteers, drilled them, but could not arm them. 
Then the other war happened. . . . 

When it happened it seemed to promise for a time 
reconciliation in Ireland in the face of a great and 
common danger. Thousands of Irishmen volunteered 
for service on behalf of the world's liberty, and the 
Irish people of the old stock believed that at last their 
country would have the right to rule herself according 
to the watchwords of the war, "the self-determination 
of peoples," "the right of the little nations," "the 
brotherhood of man." They were treated stupidly, 
tactlessly by the English War Office. Their ardor cooled, 
and then something happened which seemed an insult 
to every Irishman outside Ulster. It was an insult 
when Sir Edward Carson, their avowed enemy, the 
man who had wrecked Home Rule and raised a rebel 
army against them, was made a minister of state. 

35 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

How could they believe in the honesty or good will of 
the British government with that man in the Council 
Chamber? So step by step from exasperation to rebel- 
lion, punished ruthlessly, though Carson went scot 
free, from rebellion to general insurrection, to assassina- 
tion, to guerrilla warfare, the horror of Ireland went on, 
and all through its agony of murder and arson, govern- 
ment reprisals and executions, Carson stood behind 
Lloyd George, a sinister figure, and no word did he 
speak for peace, though he is Irish, born of an Irish- 
woman, no word of his was for the ending of bloodshed 
by a truce of God, but only irreconcilable words, dividing 
Ulster from the rest of Ireland, though at last he had 
yielded to a separate Parliament. 

"Do I look like a criminal?" asked Sir Edward Carson 
once, in bland surprise at being called one. As G. K. 
Chesterton said in answer to this question: "There is 
only one answer possible. You do!" Many times in 
those days before the war, when he was playing the 
Napoleon of the boys of Belfast, I used to study his 
face, so long and lean, with dark lines under his sunken 
eyes, and a strange, cynical sneer on his lips. A power- 
ful face, but without beauty in it, or any touch of kind- 
ness or spiritual fire or human warmth, a haunted 
face, I thought it, and guessed it might be haunted by 
the memories of all the filth and corruption and greed 
and cruelty which lawyers pass on their way in the 
criminal courts. Sir Edward Carson himself is a man 
of honor, according to the average code. He has the 
manner of a great gentleman. In private life he is, I am 
told, genial and good-natured. Toward the end of his 
fight against Irish Home Rule he was, I think, even a 
little conscience-stricken, and did at least and at last 
remove his own personality from the arena of strife. 
But he stands pilloried for all time as a raker-up of old 
hatreds, old fanaticisms, old vendettas, old tyrannies 

36 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

— the Man with the Muck Rake, prodding up the 
lower passions of ignorant and brutal men. 



VII 

So, three years after war, was Great Britain governed 
by men of the old ideas. 

In France it was the same, though their leaders were 
utterly different in type and in temperament. 

Clemenceau has passed from the scene, though the 
acts of his brain remain as a heritage to France. "The 
Tiger," he was called by his worshipers, remembering 
the ferocity of his temper, the swift strength of his intel- 
lectual claws, when he was roused to action in youth and 
the prime of life. I used to see him now and then in 
time of war when he looked more like a walrus than a 
tiger, a poor old walrus in a traveling circus. That was 
when he used to visit the war zone, to talk with the 
generals, to see the troops, to get a glimpse of that war 
machine which he helped to create and to control — • 
perhaps to find death, as some French officers whis- 
pered to me, when victory seemed impossible and de- 
feat very near. I met him several times as he sat back 
in a closed military car by the side of a French staff 
officer, looking old and worn and sad — nothing of "The 
Tiger." He went into dangerous places under fire and 
there seemed no purpose in his being there. But I think 
his purpose was to inflame his own heart against the 
enemy, to get new stores and inspiration of hate. That 
was the passion in him; and all the strength of his old 
man's soul, remembering the humiliation of 1870, seeing 
again the trail of the beast through his beloved country, 
was to live long enough to see Germany smashed and 
ground to dust. 

He had his wish, and did a good deal of the grinding, 
at the Peace Conference in Paris. Keynes's portrait of 

37 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

him will live in history, that little old man wearing gray 
gloves, which he never took off, shutting his eyes during 
speeches and interpretations which did not affect the 
essential purpose of his mind, which was the destruction 
of Germany and the advantage of France, then waking 
to instant activity of brain whenever those interests 
were involved. His outlook upon life seemed to be 
limited to the instant proof of French victory, in the 
power to extort crushing indemnities from the beaten 
enemy, to inflict the utmost severity of punishment, 
which truly as a people they deserved. He had no pa- 
tience with anyone who spoke of the perils of future 
war, no tolerance with arithmeticians who tried to point 
out that Germany could not pay all the costs of all the 
nations after her own financial ruin, no ear to give to 
others like President Wilson who proposed the ideals 
of a new society of nations by which the peoples of 
Europe should be relieved of military burdens and safe- 
guarded by common interests. He mocked at all that 
with a witty cynicism, sometimes rather blasphemous, 
as when he said that Wilson imagined himself to be 
Jesus Christ. It was he who invented the phrase in the 
early days of the war that "the English would die to the 
last Frenchman," though he made amends by later 
enthusiasm for the valor and effort of the English people. 
He had the gift of making a bon mot on any subject to 
which his interest could be awakened, but all his best 
witticisms had a touch of cruelty, without which, indeed, 
wit becomes humor. The old man was a great French- 
man, a great patriot of the old tradition. Without his 
spirit, his passion, his obstinacy, his courage, France 
would have been visibly weaker in her terrible ordeal. 
But his narrow vision could not envisage the new ideals 
for which so many men had fought and died — the de- 
struction of militarism, not only in Germany, but in 
France, a closer comradeship in the democracies of 

38 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

Europe, an international tribunal before which the claims 
of peoples would be brought, as a better way of argument 
than national massacre. Clemenceau was one of those 
who turned the world back to cynicism and national 
selfishness. It might have been better for the world if he 
had found death at the front in one of his expeditions. 
Another mind in France intrenched, after the armis- 
tice, in the spirit of the past, defying the hope of the 
future, was that of Poincare, the war-time President, 
the later critic of England. In war time he was a nonen- 
tity, ridiculed in the revues, the butt of Gallic wit, which 
never forgot his secret retreat from Paris when the 
enemy was so close to the gates in the beginning of the 
evil days. They used to dress up comic figures in a 
black uniform with a chauffeur's cap, and address them 
as "M. le President de Bordeaux," and in such a uni- 
form I saw him visiting his troops and ours, a tall man, 
with a plump waxen face, expressionless and, I thought, 
merely stupid. But after the war and his Presidency, 
he developed a gift for journalism, and his articles had 
a vicious appeal to the French public because he was 
venomous in his criticism of the government which did 
not make Germany "pay" — pay all those fantastic 
billions of gold marks which the French in their simplicity 
believed were hidden in the German treasury. It was 
Poincare who inflamed French suspicion against Eng- 
land, accused us of treachery to French claims in 
Syria, and of low commercial interests preventing 
France from reaping the fruits of victory. In all the 
conferences that assembled to carry out the Treaty of 
Versailles, England's influence was depicted by him as 
unfriendly to French interests, hostile to French policy. 
He reawakened the old tradition of "perfide Albion" 
at a time when every little clerk in Paris believed that 
English artfulness accounted for the fall in the value of 
the franc, and French peasants (forgetful too quickly of 

39 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

the young bodies of English boys that lie in their soil as 
a pledge of friendship — six hundred thousand of them!) 
said, as some of them said to me, "Nous avons gagne la 
guerre., mais V Angleterre va nous manger" ("We won 
the war, but England will devour us"). Alas! Alas! It 
was not good work by M. Poincare in regard to England. 
It was worse work for Europe. Because his advocacy of 
an impossible sum to be paid by Germany delayed the 
payment of the possible sum which could have been 
exacted in punishment of her crime against the world. 
It delayed the recovery of Europe, and perhaps pre- 
vented it for all time, unless reason prevails very soon. 

"Youth," said Herbert Hoover, in an interview I had 
with him, and which I have chronicled elsewhere, "is 
busy re-electing its old men. If Briand goes, he will be 
followed by Poincare into deeper reaction." 

Briand became Prime Minister of France, pursuing 
a policy which was to obtain the military domination of 
the Continent over the ruin of German militarism. 

It is strange to find Aristide Briand in that role, as 
it is to find Lloyd George the leader of the Conservative 
party; and, indeed, the careers of these two men who 
for a time have represented the reactionary policy of the 
Imperialists in France and England are strangely similar 
in every way. 

Like Lloyd George, Aristide Briand was born of 
humble parents who stinted and scraped to make their 
boy a lawyer, and like Lloyd George again, the young 
Briand was an ardent democrat of advanced and revolu- 
tionary ideals. His "home town," as the Americans 
say, was Nantes in Brittany, and here, after his legal 
studies in Paris, he lounged about in cafes and wine 
taverns, talking politics to the local demagogues, and 
waiting for briefs which did not come. Suddenly he 
leaped into fame for his defense in a cause celebre which 
he made for himself. 

40 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

It was in this way, as the story has been told to me. 
A peasant murdered an agent de police in a particularly 
brutal manner. To him, as he sat in his cell, went young 
Aristide and asked permission to act as counsel for the 
defense. 

"There is no defense, m'sieu," said the peasant, 
already prepared for the guillotine. 

But when the case was called, Briand stood up and 
said, "I will defend the prisoner." He called no wit- 
nesses, for those of the prosecution told the plain, brutal 
truth. But presently he began his speech for the de- 
fense. He exalted the poor besotted man into the sub- 
lime peasant type of France, and the agent de police 
into the representative of the "brutal tyranny" of the 
French government. With wonderful oratory he de- 
scribed the life, the ignorance, the hard unending labor, 
the very soul of peasant life in France, as Guy de Mau- 
passant revealed it, as Zola made it terrible in realism. 
The papers reported the speech, which lasted many 
hours, and went on from one day to another. France 
rocked with excitement. In the courthouse the jury 
were moved to tears. The peasant was acquitted, 
"without a stain on his character," and young Aristide 
Briand was embraced by his friends. Nantes was not 
big enough for him. He went to Paris with a few shirts 
in his bag. He called on Jean Jaures, the Socialist 
leader, then editing L'Humanite, and sent up his card. 

"Are you that young lawyer who defended the 
peasant at Nantes?" asked Jaures. 

Briand smiled and bowed. 

Jaures embraced him. 

"What can I do for you, mon vieuxV 

"Give me three hundred francs a month and a seat 
in your office," said Aristide Briand. 

He became a journalist. He wrote scathing articles 
against the government. He entered politics and made 
4 41 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

inflammatory speeches in the country on behalf of labor. 
The government began to take notice of him — began 
to be afraid of him. With Jean Jaures he helped to 
organize and strengthen the Confederation Generate du 
Travail, and worked out a plan for a general strike 
which would paralyze the government and deliver 
France into the hands of the syndicates or trade unions. 
Then the government offered him office. . . . 

When I met Aristide Briand before the war he was a 
Minister of France, hated as a renegade and traitor by 
Jean Jaures, Gustave Herve, and all the leaders of labor. 
He had forged the weapon of the general strike, and left 
it in their hands. It was they who drew the sword to 
strike him down. 

The general strike was declared, and all France was 
paralyzed. Not a train "marched," as they say. Not 
a wheel turned. Paris was cut off from supplies, in 
danger of starvation. At night it was plunged in dark- 
ness, and I remember the gangs of students trooping 
down from the Quartier Latin to the boulevards on the 
right bank, with lanterns and bits of candle, singing 
lugubrious dirges with the enjoyment of youth in any 
kind of drama. But the government of France, all law 
and order, were threatened by general revolution. Then 
Briand showed the courage in him. He answered the 
challenge of the general strike by calling all men of 
several classes to the colors. That meant all the strikers. 
It was penalty of death if they disobeyed orders. Would 
they dare disobey? That was the question upon which 
Briand risked not only his own life, but the life of France. 
History tells that they obeyed — the strongest instinct 
in the Frenchman's heart, loyalty to the flag, immediate 
response to military tradition. 

I saw Briand at that time face to face, in one of the 
most interesting interviews I have had in my life. It 
was in a room furnished in the style of Louis XV, ele- 

42 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

gant with its long mirrors and gilded chairs, and I stood 
by the side of a writing table where once Napoleon 
Bonaparte sat as Emperor of the French. I chatted to 
one of the secretaries, and there were others in the 
room. Presently the door opened, and a tall, heavy- 
shouldered man with a shock of black hair and a pale 
face with somber eyes stood staring at me. 

"Monsieur Briand!" whispered the secretary, hur- 
riedly, because I stared back, not realizing that this was 
the man, but strangely held by those dark eyes. 

He talked in a friendly way, explained the gravity of 
the situation in France, the need of strong action to re- 
store the authority of government, his faith in the loyalty 
of the French people. It was not so much what he said 
that impressed me then, and now, but the personality 
of the man, the look of intense fire within him, a kind 
of mysticism or spiritual exaltation i the depths of that 
dark gaze of his. He was more typical, I thought, of a 
revolutionary leader than of French bureaucracy. 

During the war he bided his time, took no great share 
in national events. There were many who thought he 
would be the Prime Minister of a liberal France, looking 
beyond the immediate fruits of victory to a new pact of 
peace in Europe between the democracies of many coun- 
tries, rising to the ideal of a League of Nations. In- 
stead, he demanded the advance into the Ruhr which 
might have been a mortal wound to white civilization 
in Europe by insuring a war of the future in which the 
last of our youth would perish. For that policy could 
only be maintained as long as France held the power 
of the sword, and one day that will weaken. 

VIII 

I write these things not in blame; not even in cirti- 
cism of these leaders of the old tradition in Europe. 

43 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

By all the probabilities of psychological law not a man 
who reads this book of mine would have done otherwise 
than what he did, or would have been nobler, wiser than 
any of them. They did their best to the height of their 
quality and character, to the limit of their national 
vision. 

Looking at the settlement of Europe after the war, 
and the terms of peace, in the light of old precedents, 
with reference to what was done after other wars and 
other victories, and with no reaching out to new ideals, 
they fulfilled their duty loyally, each man, to the imme- 
diate interests of his own country, as they seemed to 
him, each man striving for what gain his nation might 
get. One cannot blame them because as leaders they 
rose no higher than the ethical average of political 
morality. One cannot criticize them because they were 
little statesmen and not great philosophers — the poineers 
of a new world. One only laments that in this time of 
enormous crisis in the world's history there appeared 
no men or man among us with a genius great enough to 
call humanity to a new advance upon the road of social 
progress, to call upon all that surging of emotion and 
idealism which was at work in the hearts of peoples 
because of the agony they had suffered and their dreadful 
disgust at the thing that had happened. 

The failure of the leaders of the old tradition was due 
to their utter inability to realize that the war which 
had ended and the victory gained were unlike all others 
in history. 

They did not understand, being poor men at arith- 
metic, that most of the accumulated wealth of Euro- 
pean civilization had been destroyed in those four and 
a half years, leading to such exhaustion among victors 
as well as vanquished that the industrial life of Europe 
was threatened with decay and death. 

They did not know that by the intricate and delicate 

44 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

machinery of modern industrial civilization depending 
upon a liberal interchange of credits, raw material, ex- 
ports, imports, and all activities of working folk, the 
ruin of one great people must of necessity injure the 
commerce of all surrounding countries and lower the 
average of wealth, the normal standard of life, in every 
other nation. 

Their imagination was not educated to the power of 
gauging the effect of the enormous loss of man power 
and of spiritual strength, upon the work in fields and 
factories of all peoples who had been stricken in the 
conflict, so that for years their output would be de- 
creased and their markets damaged, with the inevitable 
result of widespread unemployment and increasing 
poverty. 

They believed, in their simplicity, that, despite the 
hideous calamity of Russia, once the granary of Europe, 
and a great market, notwithstanding the sentence of 
death they proposed to pass on Austria, and the col- 
lapse of a great part of central Europe, they could 
avoid their own bankruptcy and revive their own 
prosperity, by getting all the costs of war from Germany. 
Some of their own economic advisers warned them that 
Germany was also ruined, and that only by future indus- 
try spread over innumerable years could she ever pay 
for the actual damage done, and that even then, if she 
paid back by an enormous output of manufactured 
articles produced by the sweated labor of a slave popu- 
lation, the whole balance of trade in the world would 
be upset and the industry of England, France, and many 
countries would be undermined. At the same time that 
they wanted to make Germany pay all the costs of all 
the victories, which she could only hope to do by an 
enormous vitality of industry, fatal to the competition 
of other countries, they wanted to keep her so damaged 
and depressed that she could not rise again as a menace 

45 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

to her enemies. The problem was stated by an American 
humorist in the form of a question, "How can you keep 
a mule so weak that it cannot kick you and so strong that 
it can pull the plow?" I have not found an answer. 

Apart altogether from the economic condition of 
Europe, so desperate that it needed the wisest doctoring 
of men regarding its disease, not passionately, but with 
scientific gravity, with the knowledge that all European 
countries are members of one body, in which the disease 
of a vital organ means a spreading poison throughout 
the system — the spiritual results of the war were entirely 
ignored by the leaders of the old tradition. They acted 
as though there had been no change in the minds of men 
and women during that conflict, whereas the psychology 
of peoples had undergone enormous changes. 

The peoples had seen the meaning of modern war in 
which the civilian was as much a part of its destructive 
activity as the soldier himself, in which all humanity 
was overwhelmed by monstrous engines of destruction. 
The victor peoples did not desire vengeance so much as 
security from future war. The vanquished, after having 
spilled torrents of the blood of youth in vain, were ready, 
for a little while at least, to accept all the penalties of 
defeat, if they were but given the hope of regeneration. 
Long before the end of the war the German peasants 
and artisans had abandoned the ideals of militarism to 
which they had rallied in the early days. They called 
the war "The Great Swindle," as I read in hundreds of 
letters captured from their dugouts. On the Russian 
Front they were infected with the pacifist philosophy of 
the Soviets before it became the bloody terror of the 
Bolsheviks. On the Western Front they acclaimed the 
Fourteen Points of President Wilson. Something might 
have been made out of that new psychology by new 
leaders who did not assume that the psychology of the 
peoples was the same in 1919 as in 1914. 

46 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

In Germany the leaders of the old tradition also be- 
trayed the new hopes. The German people, by the stupor 
of defeat, an inherited sense of obedience to their ruling 
caste, and a national hatred of revolutionary violence, 
failed to overthrow the caste which had led them to 
disaster. The Junkers remained in their strongholds 
and not one of them was hanged up to his gatepost. 
The old bureaucracy of the Empire remained as the bu- 
reaucracy of the Republic. Noske, Scheidemann, 
Ebert, were no more democratic in spirit than Beth- 
mann-Hollweg or Doctor Solf. Hindenburg and Luden- 
dorff still remained heroic figures in the imagination of 
men who remembered that those names had been linked 
with great victories on many fronts where the German 
race had fulfilled its pride. The very depths of their 
defeat, the hatred of all the world to them, caused reac- 
tion in the mind of the German populace, who had 
cursed them as tyrants when the war was on, and now 
softened to them, swung back to them in admiration, 
as heroes of the time before the great humiliation. The 
German people, immediately after their defeat, might 
have flung off their old castes and tyrannies with a great 
cry of liberation, and asked for the generosity of the 
world's democracy. I believe they were for a time ready 
to do so, if any great leader had been with them to 
help. I believe they are ready even now, if any leader 
in the world would help them. But instead, they 
allowed themselves to be led by the old, crafty, auto- 
cratic minds of the Prussian tradition, whose sole idea 
of patriotism was to shirk honest payment on any basis 
of justice and to scorn repentance for great crimes. 
Their sole idea of statecraft was to bluster and bully 
before the victor nations and their own people, and their 
one hope of escape from the consequences of defeat was 
to divide the Allies by intrigue, and to recapture their 
own power by economic forces created by the slave 

47 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

industry of their half-starved workers. The Supreme 
Council of the Allies, and the chauvinists of the Allied 
nations, played into the hands of the German leaders 
of the old tradition. They declined to follow Wilson's 
lead of giving German democracy a chance, on condition 
that German Junkerdom should be destroyed. 

By the many injustices of the Peace Treaty which put 
large Teutonic populations under the domination of 
Poles, Italians, and Czechs, killed the economic life of 
Austria, and imposed burdens upon the working people 
of Germany which seemed to them beyond human toler- 
ance, the Allies hardened the temper of those people 
and stifled their hope of deliverance from their own old 
tyrannies. They were made the pariah people of the 
earth. No nation would receive them. No enemy 
would forgive them. No hope would be given to them. 
It is no wonder that gradually they harked back to their 
old national sentiment and, being denied a new inter- 
national ideal, turned to the old caste again, which at 
least had defended the old nationalism. They intrenched 
themselves in hate against hate, abandoned thoughts of 
a new freedom for the hope of a new vengeance. 

I am not one of those who minimize the guilt of Ger- 
many in the war. I remember great brutalities, abom- 
inable wickedness. Nor do I ignore the claims of justice 
for due punishment of crimes, and the absolute right of 
France to the reconstruction of her devastated coun- 
try and all the ruins of her state. But I believe that if 
the leaders of the old tradition had been greater in 
leadership and had called all people to a new philosophy 
of international life for the sake of future peace and 
the common weal of Europe, the German people would 
have paid more willingly, according to their power, and 
would have labored with all their might of industry to 
build up the ruins they had caused. Because they and 
their fellow workers in all countries would have been 

48 



LEADERS OF THE OLD TRADITION 

inspired with enthusiasm for the healing of wounds, so 
that free peoples, cured of the old disease of war, might 
march joyfully to new conquests in peace. There was a 
chance of that, and I am not alone in thinking so. All 
the thinking men and women I meet in many parts of 
the world believe so too — realists like Hoover, idealists 
like Robert Cecil, humanists like Anatole France and 
H. G. Wells. But the leaders of the old tradition would 
not have it so. 



II 

IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 



IN this world of cynical old people who stare forward 
to the future with a melancholy which is masked by 
an ironical contempt for human nature — has it not 
proved itself incapable of wisdom or of any sane scheme 
of progress? — and who have a secret or avowed convic- 
tion that Europe is doomed by the fatal consequences 
of recent history, there are still numbers of men and 
women, in every country, with an ardent faith in the 
possibility of building a nobler system of life than that 
which existed before the ruin into which war plunged 
the European peoples. 

These idealists are brave folk! To their opponents the 
cynics, they seem ridiculous, though charming — dear, 
unpractical creatures looking at life through a mirage of 
sentiment, ignoring plain and frightful facts, trying to 
twist human nature to standards of conduct which 
mankind is totally incapable of adopting, fighting, with 
pretty or futile phrase, against the monstrous powers of 
evolution, racial pressures, physical distress, primitive 
and ineradicable instincts of greed, cruelty, and passion 
which belong to the human animal. 

Certainly the history of these recent years seems to 
be a death blow to the idealists, and it is surprising to 
find some of them still alive — some of the old guard — 
scarred and wounded in their souls — but still valiant, 
undeterred, ardent. Remember what they aimed at and 

50 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

how tremendously they failed, as they knew they had 
failed, on that day of August, 1914, when the great 
armies moved and Armageddon came. 

Take a man like Jean Jaures, the leader of the French 
Socialists, one of the old guard who fell in the fight. He 
was really a sentimentalist, though he roared like a lion. 
With a gift of violent oratory at his command when- 
ever he wished to stir the emotion of mobs, as I saw him 
stir them in the old days of Paris, intolerant and abusive 
of a religion which seemed to him the protector and ally 
of the evil powers of military force and class privilege 
whom he was fighting, he had a philosophy and a faith 
which, in its simple motives, in spite of ironical skepti- 
cism, was really Christian in its idealism. He believed, 
beneath all the superficial irony of French wit and the 
stark realism of French intelligence, that human nature 
in the mass is capable of "salvation" and that its con- 
science is divine in essence, ready to choose the way of 
righteousness, rather than of animalism, if liberated 
from ignorance and filth and from the false spells put 
upon it by corrupt rulers. He believed — and it was a 
wonderful faith for a Frenchman — that the peoples of 
all countries, even of that country which still held 
Alsace and Lorraine and maintained the menace of an 
army which threatened France with death, might be 
united in a common brotherhood, based upon the 
common interests of a free democracy and upon claims 
of human nature nobler than national rivalries, the love 
of wife and babes; the denial of blood lust between 
laboring men; the right to peace and joy in life among 
peoples in possession of their soil, with ample security of 
life's necessities; a little margin of wealth for beauty 
and recreation for every toiler, and freedom from the 
tyranny of governing classes, or overrich castes, who 
made use of the bodies and souls of humbler men for 
financial warfare or imperial ambitions. That in its 

5i 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

essence and impulse was the faith of Jean Jaures and of 
millions of other men who listened to his flaming words. 
So I heard him proclaim it once in a salle de manege 
somewhere in a slum of Paris, where the bodies of two 
thousand cheminots (the railway men) were pressed 
closely and hotly together, when from their sweaty 
clothes came a rancid odor, and the heat of their breath 
was stifling in the whitewashed hall. 

He was a revolutionist, though without cruelty in his 
heart. He proclaimed "The International" and had a 
childlike optimism in the conversion of the German peo- 
ple to a pacifist gospel. He spoke grandiose words about 
"the solidarity of labor" (the new spell word of the 
toilers) and helped to organize the Confederation General 
du Travail with Briand, who defeated it when he became 
Prime Minister for the first time, because it threatened 
to overthrow the social structure of France, which had 
once been his own ambition. 

Jean Jaures was the champion of the antimilitarists 
and attacked the system of the three years' service in 
France with unceasing eloquence which made him 
feared and hated by those who were preparing for the 
"inevitable" war with the old enemy. He was bold 
enough — in France! — to denounce patriotism as a worn- 
out creed, an evil perpetuation of old feuds, a narrow 
passion that would lead indeed to a new and inevitable 
war unless it was broadened by new meanings — and no 
one who knew Jaures believed that his abuse of patri- 
otism meant any lack of love for France, because he had 
an adoration for the French spirit, for her poetry, for 
all her beauty, for Paris in every nook and corner 
haunted by old ghosts. His enemies said he had weak- 
ened France by his life's work, and that I think was true 
in so far as he succeeded in limiting expenditure on 
armaments and military preparations. By the failure 
of his philosophy, the utter breakdown of his hope to 

52 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

build a bridge of peace between the laboring folk of 
Germany and his own, all his turbulent activity had 
helped to make France less certain of victory when she 
was faced by the ordeal of war — because he had worked, 
not for the victory of war, but of peace, when there was 
no peace. On the first day of war he was struck down 
by a crazy patriot, and I saw his coffin carried through 
the Tuileries, followed by many who paid a false homage 
to his dead body out of fear of the mobs who had loved 
him. But the mobs marched with their battalions to 
save France, as he would have marched now that his 
hopes had failed of a world united in security and 
brotherhood. 

In the opposite camp — among the traditional enemies 
of France — there was another leader of democracy who 
was working for the same ideals as those of Jaures, in a 
less inspired way. It was Edward Bernstein, the leader 
of the Social Democrats. He, too, had preached the 
"solidarity of labor," the common interests of working 
folk across the frontiers of nations, and the doctrine of 
international peace. Those to whom the Jewish race 
is a bogey of evil working by subterranean ways to over- 
turn the structure of civilization, that Israel may reign 
supreme above its ruin, will scoff at Bernstein's name 
and denounce him as one of the dark hypocrites of that 
frightful conspiracy. I thought him an honest man, 
within the ordinary limitations of political leaders, when 
I met him in Berlin before the war, and I think so still. 
So honest in his estimate of actual conditions that he 
confessed his despair to me and the weakness of his own 
leadership because he saw the inevitability of the Arma- 
geddon that was coming, owing to the conflict of powers 
and castes and traditions which had more sway over 
the people than any teaching of his. 

I remember him now — though between then and 
now is the war that was fought, and a world that has 

S3 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

changed — sitting in a swing chair before a roll-top desk, 
telling me things that did not startle me, because my 
imagination was incapable of adjusting itself to their 
significance. His exact words I have forgotten, but he 
spoke of the lack of education in international ideals 
among the working classes of Germany. They had 
adopted international catchwords, sincerely but super- 
ficially. His teaching and that of his predecessors had 
not broken down national impulses, the vainglory of 
national pride, the passionate belief in the invincibility 
of the German army, the sense of imperial destiny 
taught in the schools, the influences of militarism, 
monarchy, and racial loyalty which were inculcated by 
the whole system and philosophy of German kultur. 

"If war comes," said Bernstein, "the Social Demo- 
crats who have been theoretical pacifists will march as 
one man against the enemy, whoever that may be. Our 
ideals are still in advance of the psychology of peoples." 

He spoke the exact dreadful truth, and at the out- 
break of war Social Democracy in Germany betrayed its 
faith, unable to resist the call to a false patriotism 
which seemed higher then than any other gospel, though 
its aims were devilish. So most other pacifists in all 
countries found themselves compelled to declare a 
moratorium to their hopes of international comradeship 
and fell back to national aspirations on behalf of a vic- 
tory which, for the time being, seemed — on both sides 
of the line! — decreed by God for justice' sake and hu- 
man progress. 

How foolish, then, how vain and mocking to poor 
human toilers in world ideals, seemed all the efforts of 
their life toward a larger fraternity of man! That was 
one of the worst and most shocking tragedies of war, 
for to these simple souls — simple most of them, in spite 
of hard reading and long research into the history of 
thought — all their faith came toppling down to ruim 

54 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

Whatever God they had worshiped in the secret 
shrines of their hearts seemed to have betrayed them. 
The devils laughed at them, crying, "How now, simple- 
tons?" For they had believed that human nature had 
reached a stage when it would refuse to go back to the 
old barbarities of wholesale slaughter in the fields of 
Europe, and that the level of common intelligence 
among "civilized" peoples had been lifted above the 
possibilities of such a general massacre as now must 
happen among them. Elementary education had made 
great strides. The peoples had learned to read. They 
had read the little pamphlets of the Fabian Society. 
Sidney Webb had lectured to them. H. G. Wells had 
written his socialistic novels for them. G. B. Shaw had 
ridiculed them out of old superstitions. Across the 
English Channel, Anatole France was the last of a long 
series of ironists, from Rabelais onward, who had mocked 
at the slavery of the common folk under the supersti- 
tion of political and tyrannical dogmas which turned 
them into gun fodder for the big game of war, played by 
imperialists and financiers. Even out of Russia, still 
under tyranny, still illiterate in the mass, had come a 
new prophet of peace and human brotherhood — Tolstoy. 
He had written war and peace among his other books, 
stripping war bare of its old illusions, showing the falsity 
of its "glory," its squalor and cruelty and stupidity. 
In all great countries of Europe — except poor Russia, 
still in chains — the idealists had seen with eyes of faith 
a general awakening of mass intelligence to the high 
sanities of life — the reasonable arrangement of inter- 
national peace, the closer comradeship between "Labor" 
in all countries, a higher standard of decency and com- 
fort, with a little leisure and learning for all citizens of 
civilized states, whose well-being at home might be 
secured by the abolition of military burdens, following 
the establishment of international arbitration. That 

55 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

blessed word — arbitration! — had been the spell word of 
the idealists. Long and ardently did they support the 
labors of the Hague Tribunal — the great guaranty of 
world peace. In big books and in booklets, how many of 
them devoted their time and money to bring these ideals 
to the mind of the masses in a spirit of self-sacrifice for 
humanity's sake! Then out of the blue sky the bolt 
fell, and with its falling destroyed all that they had 
striven to do, all their spiritual toil. 

In every country of Europe there were men and women 
stricken like that. I knew some of them. With some of 
them I had worked, now and then, half-heartedly, being 
of more frivolous mind. 

II 

I saw the tragedy of one of them a few days after the 
outbreak of war, in Paris, when the first trainloads of 
mobilises were going eastward to Toul and Belfort and 
the frontiers of Alsace and Lorraine — few northward 
where the great shadow was creeping close — and all the 
streets of Paris were filled with the passion of eternal 
partings. It was George Herbert Perris, one of the most 
untiring laborers on the road to international peace. 
I describe him, not because he was a famous man, though 
his activity was known in many countries, but because 
he was a type of many similar minds in England. All 
his working life a journalist and public speaker, his pen 
had never betrayed his principles, and his enthusiasm 
and ardor had been boyish, genially intolerant of all 
poor blockheads and reactionaries who did not believe 
with him that victory was in sight — victory for a world 
court of arbitration, for general disarmament — (how 
fiercely and with what joyful irony he had exposed the 
commercial activities of armament firms who grew rich 
out of war-making!) and for a fraternal democracy of 
peoples across the frontiers of nationality. He was a 

56 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

disciple of Tolstoy and had written his life with rever- 
ence, though he could not follow the old man through all 
his gospel, which, in the end, was near to madness, for 
Perris was practical and in a mystical sense unspiritual. 
He had sheltered Russian revolutionaries in his suburban 
home, was the friend of men like Kropotkin, and his 
pen had traveled over reams of paper recording the 
martyrdom of those who struggled for Russian freedom. 
He was, in his character and activities, typical of many 
groups of intellectual workers who in London, Liverpool, 
and other English cities devoted themselves to com- 
mittee work (after hours of professional toil to keep 
small homes above the poverty line) on behalf of the 
"Brotherhood of Man" and all downtrodden folk from 
Camden Town to Congo. 

In Paris I found him, after he had been carried back 
with the tide of refugees from the frontiers of war — he 
was the delegate to a meeting of the Peace League! — 
and in the shabby bedroom of the little Hotel du Dauphin 
in the rue St. Roch he confessed his agony to me. I 
remember now the gray look of his face, and his nervous 
movements in that little room, and his cry of despair. 

"This makes a mockery of all my life," he said. 
"Everything that I believed is now untrue. Everything 
I hoped is broken. This puts back civilization a hundred 
years. There is only one explanation and that is of no 
avail. It is that Germany has gone mad." 

In some such words he spoke to me, hour after hour, 
while down in the street Frenchmen were trudging with 
their wives to the railway stations, where they would 
say "Adieu!" and go to unknown horrors. 

"This war," said Perris, "the abominable criminality 
of the German attack, has killed me as a pacifist. Until 
Germany is defeated I am a believer in war to the death, 
for unless Germany is punished for this crime and utterly 
broken, there can be no hope for the world." 

5 57 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

He, too, like thousands of other men, declared a mora- 
torium of all international ideals for so long as the 
enemy remained unbeaten, but for Perris, as for some 
others, this change of spirit was like tearing out his soul. 
The cold passion of his hatred for the German war lords 
who had caused this agony was religious in its devotion. 
He became a war correspondent with the French army, 
whose valor and sacrifice he learned to admire with all 
the homage of his heart. One of the greatest pacifists in 
England was decorated with the Legion of Honor for 
his services to the French army, and kissed on both 
cheeks by the French general who conferred it. After 
the war I met my friend again, older by more than the 
four and a half years of war, worn and frail after the 
strain of it. He was at Geneva, in the Hotel du Beau 
Rivage, during the Assembly of the League of Nations, 
and we had long talks together. He had gone back to 
his faith and philosophy before the war — indeed he 
maintained that he had never changed any of his ideals. 
But I think that with him, as with many men, the years 
of war had been a separate adventure of soul, something 
apart and distinct from all previous thought and imag- 
ination, having no relation to previous qualities of 
character. Afterward the experience of it vanished as 
a nightmare, and men tried to pick up the threads of the 
previous life as they had left them, and wondered why 
they failed and fumbled. 

Perris was marvelous in the way he seemed to have 
gone back to his old way of thought. I think he emerged 
from the war with his previous ideals sharpened and 
hardened and deeper dug, though with more caution 
in his method of persuasion, and with less intolerance 
of opposition. But he was not so cynical as younger 
men who surrounded him, and his laughter rang out 
in challenge to colleagues who jeered at this work of 
the League of Nations. "Reactionaries!" he cried. 

58 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

"This League holds all the hope of the new world that 
is coming. You expect too much of it at first. We are 
on the right lines and doing good work for the healing 
of the wounded world." So he spoke and worked 
until he died, there in Geneva, a veteran in the cause of 
international peace, though the oldest and the newest 
nations were even then digging new trenches against 
the international ideal! 

At the funeral, when I stood by the coffin of my 
friend, I saluted him as one of the Old Guard. Others, 
old comrades of his in the work of his life, stood up to 
pay their tribute to him, and men like G. N. Barnes, the 
Labor Member and Privy Councilor, remembered 
the old ardent days when they, like him, had believed 
that humanity, free in common sense, would have no 
more of war on the universal scale . . . Perris was but 
a type, and a noble one, of many self-sacrificing men in 
England who did the spade work of a new world without 
public recognition or hope of fame. 

in 

Rewarded by fame, immensely fortunate in material 
success and recognition of many-sided genius, one 
idealist is working away with the energy and precision 
of an American reaper-and-binder to clear the ground 
of human intellect from its undergrowth of ignorance 
and prejudice, so that a fair new world, dedicated to 
human reason, may be built by youth thereon. That 
is H. G. Wells, one of the most whimsical prophets and 
philosophers in the history of ideas. In many ways he 
must take first place among the idealists who are trying 
to scheme out a new social structure, because he is more 
valuable than any of them, most audacious in his far- 
reaching plans, most definite, precise, and practical in 
his program, and not so "wild" in his methods of 

59 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

argument as those who would tear down the existing 
structure regardless of human tragedy before attempting 
to build upon the ruin. H. G. Wells has the artfulness 
of the "restorer" of ancient monuments, who, by under- 
pinning and other architectural dodges, produces a 
brand-new building without outraging public senti- 
ment by obvious destruction of the old. By this method 
he is able to avoid the charge of being a "revolutionary," 
his articles are printed in newspapers supported by 
the defenders and producers of "Capital," and he is 
invited out to dinner with moderately respectable 
people, including British generals, to whose head- 
quarters he went during the war with a special pass 
from G. H. Q. 

That is a little strange, when one considers the pres- 
ent nervousness of English society and the deep sus- 
picion of the military mind on the subject of revolu- 
tionary literature. For H. G. Wells is more revolu- 
tionary in his ideals than men of the trade unions or 
of the Parliamentary Labor Party, who are branded 
as "Bolsheviks" by their Conservative opponents. 
While they are thinking mostly in terms of national 
politics, to secure more democratic control of the national 
state, H. G. Wells is theoretically flinging down fron- 
tiers, overturning the last remaining dynasties, forming 
a universal alliance of Labor and establishing the 
United States of the World. It is the very magnificence 
of his conceptions that disarms all sense of fear among 
those who are fearful. They read his visions of that new 
world state as with amusement and interest they read 
his "War of the Worlds" and his "Food of the Gods," 
things too fantastic to be frightening. Then, too, he is 
labeled as a "funny man." The author of Kipps and 
Mr. Polly and Tono Bungay, vastly entertaining even 
to "nice people" of the leisured classes, is not, they 
think, to be taken seriously when he begins to write 

60 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

about God or the English political system. Perhaps 
they are right, instinctively and surely. It is the 
tragedy of H. G. Wells (though he is not a tragic figure) 
that his sense of humor and the spirit of comedy that 
presided at his birth prevent him from stirring the 
faith and emotion of people who are seeking guidance 
through the jungle darkness of this world. Though 
he holds a light before him, sometimes a clear-shining 
light of common sense, they suspect him of Pucklike 
tricks that are only a lure into deep thickets. In spite 
of the beauty of some of his thoughts (as in a book 
like Mr. Britling Sees It Through, where he was more 
sincere, more emotional in his sense of life's tragedy 
than ever before), they hear from afar his goblin laugh- 
ter, sec the mischievous glint of his sideways glance. 
They are not sure, either, of any divine fire in the man, 
any true nobility of soul which must be the attribute 
of those who would lead humanity to a higher range of 
goodness. In several of his books he thrusts forward a 
little vulgar man as his hero — he exaggerates his defects 
— rather below the ordinary standard of the social code, 
not because of the things he is pleased to do, but because 
of the way he is pleased to described them. He finds a 
comical pride in thrusting this vulgarian before the 
fastidious, as though to say, "We are all like this, and 
I dare say so!" But the teachers of the world have 
not been like that. They have been great sinners, but 
not little cads. They have agonized over their frailty, 
not found it rather good, and anyhow quite usual as a 
habit of the times. 

It was the desire of H. G. Wells to show his minute 
particular knowledge of the modern type of youth and 
middle age in the great new middle classes which made 
him put in these touches for the sake of truth. And 
they are true — true to the little lives of millions whose 
adventure of soul is confined by small proprieties, and 

61 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

whose sins are little sordid, secret immoralities. But 
that microscopic treatment of modern life has hampered 
Wells in his larger visions, and tripped up his devotees. 
I think his sense of humor, his easy tolerance of common 
weakness, not tender-hearted and all-embracing, but 
critical and sarcastic, trips up his own steps toward 
the higher ranges of thought. He stops to laugh at 
himself, as when he said to me once, after an earnest 
conversation about the attributes of the Divine Power, 
"You would hardly believe how much I am nuzzling 
up to God!" His mysticism fell with a crash; his 
groping for some higher authority than human reason 
was mocked by this guffaw. In his country house, in 
Essex, described in all delightful detail in the first 
chapters of Mr. Britling (even the German tutor was 
drawn to life), and in his rooms in London I have 
seen H. G. Wells among his friends and watched the 
man who, beyond any doubt, is one of the leaders of 
modern thought, one of the most active, untiring, ardent, 
courageous "reformers" of this society. It was sur- 
prising to me that I felt no sense of being in the com- 
pany of greatness, nor of being inspired by the light of 
genius. He made little jests, shrewd little comments, 
amusing and interesting to hear, and he was very watch- 
ful of his company, as I saw by the quick, penetrating, 
sideways looks which registered them and all their 
small tricks of manner in his photographic mind. But 
he had not the sure dogmatism of a man who has grappled 
with truth and with the elemental problems of life and 
come with some certain faith out of dark hours. Nor 
had he the smiling irony of men who have come through 
such hours, not with any certain faith, but with a tender 
and melancholy skepticism which makes them benev- 
olent to life, very tolerant, wise in the knowledge of 
their ignorance. H. G. Wells is assertive, dogmatic 
like a school-teacher, rapid in thought, as the well- 

62 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

trained journalist he is, whimsical, restless, and uneasy. 
In his work he is like that — quick, journalistic, cock- 
sure, slick in the craftsmanship of his ideas. Yet, after 
all, astonishing in the universal range and energy of 
his endeavors, in the courage of his ideas, the gallant 
way he takes all the world for his province, all history 
for his background, all the future for his prophecy, all 
humanity for his microscope. He has, perhaps more 
than any living writer in the English language, stirred 
up the common mind to think beyond the little bound- 
aries of suburban experience, to see his own little life 
as in a mirror, to feel in closer touch with the big move- 
ments of the human family, and to desire more knowl- 
edge of history and science in order to lift the human 
race, and his own personality, to a cleaner and nobler 
stage of social progress. That is a big thing to do, and 
H. G. Wells, in spite of little characteristics not belong- 
ing to the highest genius, has been big in endeavor and 
achievement up to that point. With the clean, sharp 
weapon of his pen he is now educating the middle- 
class mind in the international idea, which has the uni- 
versal brotherhood of man as its great ideal. 

IV 

The "Mob" (as it used to be called with contempt), 
not belonging to the middle class, but to the ranks of 
labor — the intelligent mechanic, the factory hand, 
the skilled laborer — is being educated toward the 
same ideal by pamphleteers and tract writers unknown 
by name to all outside that class, and by local oratory 
and debating societies, and private conversations be- 
tween shifts of work, for mixed up with idealism is the 
hard selfishness of narrow trade interests, a cruelty of 
hatred of the class above, and the wild fervor of revolu- 
tionary propaganda which has no motive but destruction. 

63 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Between the incalculable ferment that is at work 
among the masses of working people in all countries of 
Europe — as yet we do not know what will rise out of 
that yeasty thought — and the theoretical adventures 
in reconstruction by the intellectual reformers, there 
is an immense chasm of psychology so far unbridged. 
There is, as yet, no one in Europe — at least I do not 
know him — who speaks with the voice of the people, 
whose words find an echoing thrill in the heart of the 
people, whose leadership and magic personality are 
acknowledged by the people. 

No writer has appeared of late to be the interpreter 
of the great multitude, as Charles Dickens was in his 
time and within the limitations of his contemporary 
thought. No poet like Victor Hugo has arisen to call 
to the soul of his folk with a music of words which was 
magic to every Frenchman, so that they vibrated to 
his rhythm, were inspired by his passion. No man of 
action has humanity behind him, ready to go where he 
beckons, as once Napoleon led his legions in the name 
of liberty and glory to many battlefields where their 
bones were strewn. No religious teacher has come out 
of study or cloister to utter thunder words before which 
the multitudes tremble and fall down, in obedience to 
him, or words of love giving life a new sweetness even 
in sacrifice, and a sense of richness in poverty. Our 
leaders of thought seem to be enormously ignorant of 
the instincts, ideas, and purposes of humanity in the 
mass, of their suffering, their agonies, their hopes, their 
passions. Too many of them talk from high, bleak 
altitudes, in the accents of cultured castes, in unpop- 
ular language, and without the fire of human love to 
warm the heart of the crowd. 

Typical of such men seems to me Lord Robert Cecil 
in many ways, by many qualities, the leader of the new 
political idealism in English culture. He stood for 

64 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

honesty and honor and truth at a time when the bar- 
gain between half-hearted Liberals and Tory reaction- 
aries had resulted in a Coalition Parliament which 
voted blindly at the dictates of the Prime Minister and 
his Cabinet, surrendering their duty of criticism, de- 
fending every ill-conceived act, every extravagance of 
policy, all unwisdom due to the narrow reactionary 
brains of the Prime Minister's masters (his very soul 
was surrendered to them as a bargain for political 
kingship), with a tame acquiescence hardly known 
before in the history of the House of Commons. Al- 
though a Conservative by instinct and education, 
above all by the immense influence of his family history 
and the almost sacred traditions of the House of Cecil 
as the divinely appointed rulers and protectors of 
England, intrenched against revolutionary change and 
dangerous tendencies of thought (had it not been so 
for four hundred years?), Lord Robert's sense of honor, 
his sensitive repugnance to injustice and brutality, 
his ethical faith in Christianity applied to political 
principles, made him revolt from the intrigues, bar- 
gainings, sinister adventures, and callous indifference 
to the ideals which had been the watchwords of war 
— liberty, the self-determination of peoples, the war to 
end war — revealed by the Ministers of the Coalition 
and their rabble of sycophants. He at least was a 
gentleman, fastidious and nice in his sense of honor, 
contrasting with the liars, the sharpers, and low-bred 
adventurers who surrounded the Prime Minister, like 
Poins, Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol, and the wild cronies 
of Harry's youth. 

His vision of world peace was on nobler lines than 
national greeds, and as the representative of South 
Africa (which gave him greater liberty of action with- 
out committing the Cabinet to his policy) he did more 
than any other man in Europe to uphold the ideals of 

65 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

the League of Nations and to fashion the Assembly 
out of a chaotic crowd, without precedents of procedure, 
into a real Parliament of Nations before which the for- 
eign delegates could bring their proposals for orderly 
debate. 

His long, lank figure, with hunched shoulders and 
ascetic, monklike face, arrested the imagination of all 
members in an Assembly which represented twenty-one 
nations, and they watched his appearances on the plat- 
form, his repeated risings to points of order, and the 
cold fervor of his enthusiasm for abstract principles 
and legal niceties, with an unabated interest in a strange 
psychology. One Frenchman by my side in the gallery, 
looking down upon him, made a grotesque comment 
in English which I am sure was a mistranslation of the 
phrase he wanted to use. "This Lord Robert/' he 
whispered, "is like a debauched clergyman!" What I 
fancy he meant to say was an "unfrocked priest," and 
certainly there is in Lord Robert Cecil's face and manner 
the continual suggestion of a monastic soul, or, rather, 
an ecclesiastical quality. He seems a dedicated man, 
superior by ascetic habit to all human frailties, with 
the dryness of the old schoolmen in his method of 
thought. He stands as a rare figure in English political 
life, fine in courtesy, never stooping to baseness, an 
aristocrat of intellect and temperament. With broader 
qualities, more "fire in his belly," more love and knowl- 
edge of common folk, he would be the ideal leader of a 
new march forward in the adventure of English life. 
But that ecclesiastical manner and the legal twist of 
his brain and an unconscious air of superiority to 
fellow men (not insolent, but inherent in his very being) 
will never gain for him the following of great legions. 

Yet as one of the "Intellectuals" in England, he has 
a high and worthy place, and is a standard bearer in 
the spiritual conflict against the forces of evil which 

66 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

threaten to submerge the European peoples. For the 
larger liberty of Ireland, from coercion and reprisals in 
a miserable time of terror and counter-terror, he has 
spoken according to the old standards of English jus- 
tice and honor when these were forgotten by ministers 
of state and their hirelings in dirty work. For modera- 
tion toward the beaten enemy, with justice based on 
reason rather than passion, when all nations of Europe 
must unite for economic recovery or surely perish, 
he has worked with intellectual devotion and risked 
the anger of a Hun-howling press which still has power 
to break a public man if they hate the virtue in him. 
He has never swerved in his belief that force is the 
worst way of argument if ever reason gets a chance for 
settlement by consent, and that is his gospel for the 
recovery of Europe, if fools will stop their folly, as he 
once told me, while his long arms clasped his long legs 
and his ascetic face was just as a craftsman monk would 
have carved a prior in stone for a cloister effigy — 
conscious of authority, strong in self-discipline, dry 
in humor. 



A powerful little group of Intellectuals — not revolu- 
tionary, but "advanced" — surround H. W. Massing- 
ham, editor of The Nation, and he is certainly one of 
the guiding spirits in the intellectual life of England. A 
strange man I have always thought him, in brief en- 
counters, with something dark, mysterious, and Celtic 
in his psychology. Something cankered him years ago, 
some secret of his soul — disappointed ambition or tragic 
contempt of human nature which would not go the way 
he hoped. Long before the war he was a bitter man, 
darkly melancholy, and with a cold ferocity of attack 
when he drove his pen against political opponents or 

67 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

literary pretenders. He has always been prone to see 
virtue in all countries but his own, and has been such a 
lover of liberty that he has almost defended German 
militarism itself when defeated by stronger force. Anti- 
imperialist, anti-protectionist, anti-everything in which 
the Tory mind has found its gospel, and the popular 
crowd its war cries, he has been the most acid critic of 
all that John Bull stands for in character and caricature, 
and John Bull, not the paper, but the type, has hated 
him for years as a traitor, a crawling pacifist, a coward, 
and a dirty dog. He is not a traitor, but a sensitive 
plant to any touch of brutality or injustice that seems 
to him hurtful to the good name of England and to the 
human family. He so hates cruelty to the under dog, 
the weak, the ignorant, that he is cruel himself in his 
attacks upon those who seem to him bullies in their 
nature and methods. He is almost morbid in his 
hatred of spiritual and physical pain, and agonizes over 
the sufferings of men and women and animals and 
birds in this cruel conflict of life. The war to him was 
the supreme downfall of the civilized ideal, the great 
darkness of our soul and time, and in his office in the 
Adelphi he suffered with the sufferings of all the wounded, 
blinded, agonized men. 

He never wanted "victory." He wanted only "peace." 
He was what the French called a defaitiste because 
for a long time before the armistice he clung to every 
hope of a negotiated peace, strove by all the power of 
his pen to destroy the policy of the "knock-out blow," 
and was the fierce, unrelenting critic of ministerial 
stupidities in the management of the war, not because 
he wanted the war better managed, but quicker ended, 
by popular disgust. He had but one glimpse of war's 
horror on the battlefields when he went on a few days' 
visit to the western front. He had been invited by 
the "propaganda" side of the Army Intelligence which 

68 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

had a simple belief that a sight of the men in the trenches 
and at the guns would convert any pacifist into a howl- 
ing "Hun hater." Massingham came and saw. He 
stood by a battery of six-pounders up by Posieres in 
the Somme fields and every round fired seemed to hurt 
him like a nail driven through the head. The roar of 
artillery and the answering scream of German shells 
seemed to vibrate every quivering nerve in his body and 
brain. The leprous look of those shell-plowed fields, 
where no blade of grass grew under the flail of steel, 
deepened the pallor of his face, and in his eyes was the 
horror of a man who sees hell before him. 

Yet in moral courage Massingham has had few equals, 
for he dared to attack a government invested with 
absolute power over the liberty of its citizens, under 
the Defense of the Realm Act ("Dora" as the wits 
called it), which in time of war and long afterward was 
a sharp and ruthless weapon against those who spoke 
or wrote against its acts, authority, and judgment. 
He challenged popular opinion at a time when it was 
passionate and brutal. His letter box received many 
threats of violence, sometimes a menace of death. He 
paid no heed to them, but one friend of mine, loyal to 
this man of ice and fire, used to follow him secretly 
when he left his office at night, to be close if any ruffian 
made a pounce. In allegiance to Massingham, many 
of them his lifelong associates in revolt against cruelty 
wherever it might be found, are such men as Henry 
Nevinson, J. L. Hammond, H. N. Brailsford, H. M. 
Tomlinson, knights-errant of the pen, crusaders all on 
behalf of the Holy Land which dwells in their vision. 



VI 

For years before the Great War, Nevinson was a 
follower of little wars, as an old type of war corre- 

69 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

spondent, always hating the stupidity of that way of 
argument, and its beastliness, yet always allying him- 
self with any people fighting for liberty. Between the 
wars of nations, he was an onlooker of revolutions and 
civil strife, writing on the side of the under dog, a par- 
tisan of those who challenged tyranny. 

Nevinson was bravest and most quixotic when he 
faced the ridicule of his own people by espousing the 
cause of the militant suffragettes. Many times in the 
days of that strange feminine adventure to which cold 
logic, self-sacrifice for political ideals, and a sense of 
humor were mixed up with wild hysteria and the vicious- 
ness of thwarted women, have I seen Nevinson, as the 
one male escort of suffragette demonstrators forcing 
their way through rowdy and riotous mobs into which 
mounted police were charging and foot police were 
overwhelmed by the pressure of human weight. Nevin- 
son's tall form, with silver hair and bronzed face, had a 
knightly look then as always, but men chose him for 
their rough handling. He was a tough customer to 
handle, and once at the Albert Hall when he sprang to 
the rescue of a woman who had been struck down by a 
coward's blow, he gave battle to a company of stewards 
who fell upon him, and dented several of them before 
they flung him out — this noble, mild-eyed man, so full 
of courtesy, so benignant, so wise and witty, such a 
scholar and gentleman. 

We met in the Great War, in strange and menacing 
places. In the first days on the Belgian coast, as when 
we paced the esplanade at Nieuport when our shells 
were screaming overhead from monitors at sea, and 
presently German shells answered back and smashed 
into the houses about us. Nevinson strolled up and 
down, up and down, with a most tranquil courage. . . . 
Our ways parted, and then met again toward the end 
of the war when he came again to the western front, 

70 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

walked toward German machine-gun fire as though 
it were but raindrops, received the surrender of German 
prisoners from a crowded dugout, though quite unarmed, 
and as a war correspondent received salutes from all 
the army, because he looked as a "field marshal" 
would like to look. 

It was inevitable that Nevinson should champion 
the Irish cause. It was waiting for him. Has he not 
been on the side of all little nations demanding liberty? 
In Ireland after the war he has been chronicling in his 
cold, unimpassioned way the history of murder and ret- 
ribution, ambush and reprisal, with an intellectual bias 
in favor of the Irish people who are suffering under 
all this anarchy because they will not surrender their 
claim to be a nation, separated by race and faith, by 
long and tragic memories, by fires of hatred inflamed 
in the passion of this recent history, from England, which 
seeks to impose her rule as on a subject people, by force 
of arms. Death dodged Nevinson in the Great War. 
Some bullet will find him in Dublin or in some civil 
strife at home. 



VII 

And Tomlinson, whom Nevinson loves as I do — 
what a strange assistant-editor to Massingham, his 
chief! Massingham's blood runs cold, but Tomlinson 
has a burning fever in him. Massingham has the 
fastidious manner of an intellectual aristocrat, rather 
arrogant in his range of classical and modern knowledge. 
Tomlinson, born down Wapping way, the son of a 
skipper, belongs to the people of poverty and humility, 
except by a genius which lifts him above them and most 
of us, however polished. In his youth he discovered 
the magic of words and found that he could capture 
its secret. To him words are jewels. By digging for 

71 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

them as they lie hidden below the rubbish of common- 
place speech, he finds in their sound the harmonies of 
beauty that lie deep in them, and wonderful architec- 
tural values when he goes building with them. Yet 
he never uses words as a substitute for thought, for more 
sensuous music. He is a realist in his way of thinking, 
cutting his way deep and ruthlessly to truth, seeing 
life with its cruelty, its stupidity, its incoherence and 
fumbling. He has written two good books, The Sea 
and the Jungle and The Port of London, but it is 
as a journalist, mainly anonymous, that he has done 
much of his best work. More than as a writer, his 
personality counts with those who know him — a whim- 
sical personality, with a face like a friendly gargoyle 
on a Gothic church, smiling down at humanity passing. 
He has an ironical humor that makes one laugh with 
twisted entrails when he is mocking at life's pomposi- 
ties. A son of the people, he remains a lover of the peo- 
ple, though he knows their ignorance, their sheeplike 
instincts, their frenzies and passions. The war, of 
which he saw much as a war correspondent, left him with 
a bleeding soul. He groaned over the agonies of youth, 
over all that wasted flower of life, and afterward he 
understood the agony hidden in little homes in mean 
streets — the homes of the people he knows best — and 
all his passion burned in him, consuming him with rage 
and bitterness, because of the misery of broken manhood 
and womanhood caused by the brutal sacrificial cruelty 
of war — of that war which in his soul he believed was 
forced upon the world not only by the Germans, but by 
evil forces of greed and corruption in high places on 
both sides of the fighting line, using the spirit and 
bodies of humble folk, spellbound by false watchwords, 
as the counters in this game of devils. 

A most humorous ironical man, in spite of his sense 
of tragedy, I remember his comical grimaces in strange 

72 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

places of the war, as when, through a snowstorm, we 
came out of the shattered village of Kemmel in Flanders 
— where the old dead in the little cemetery had been 
torn out of their coffins by shell fire — and passed a 
civilian in evening dress without an overcoat, walking 
quietly to this hunting ground of death. Tomlinson 
smiled at me most whimsically, tapped his big forehead, 
and said, with a kind of joy, as though the sight con- 
firmed all his convictions: "Mad! Mad! We're all 
mad!" 

In the early days of the war, before he wore the 
uniform of a war correspondent, he was wandering about 
an ammunition dump close to the lines in darkness 
illumined only by flashes of shell fire. A Tommy 
stared at his strange figure like the Ancient Mariner 
in a cloth cap, walked round him three times, and said, 
"Who the 'ell are you?" "I'm the representative of 
the Times," said the delectable Tomlinson, modestly 
and hiding the awful fact that he was also represent- 
ing the Daily News. "Yus, bloody likely!" said the 
gunner, convinced of his capture of a spy. "You come 
along with me." And indeed nothing could have been 
more unlikely than that Tomlinson should be the 
representative of the Times, or that any civilian soul 
should be about an ammunition dump at midnight 
under shell fire. 

Deaf in one ear, he had the advantage of that on the 
battlefields, and when, outside Bapaume, a monstrous 
shell came screaming, he cocked his head on one side 
and asked, very simply, "What bird is that?" But the 
best memory I have of Tomlinson is when with quiet 
ardor he converted a typical British general to a 
tolerance of socialistic ideals. . . . The general after- 
ward lost his job, undermined perhaps by this phi- 
losophy. 

And now Tomlinson is among the idealists, trying to 
6 73 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

argue the world to sanity and stinging stupidity with 
whips of irony. 

VIII 

These men whom I have taken haphazard as types 
of intellectual leadership in the world after war are all 
members of groups thinking, talking, writing, organizing, 
and each group and every individual in each group is 
backed up by friendship and correspondence with 
other minds in England, and through Europe, of the 
same sympathies and ethical outlook. It is to some 
extent a secret confraternity whose members know one 
another not by any badge of membership or by fellow- 
ship of political parties, clubs, and committees, but by 
the exchange of a smile, an ironical lifting of eyebrows, 
a quiet comment on some new act of government, a 
new tyranny of reactionary powers, another stupidity 
of passion thwarting the reconciliation and peace of 
people. They meet, as I meet them, in railways trains 
on the Continent, in wine taverns and tea shops, in 
newspaper offices, in apartment houses of New York 
and Washington and Paris, and in London drawing- 
rooms after dinner, where little groups gather for con- 
versation, as once before the Revolution in France the 
Intellectuals came to the salons to discuss the existence 
of God and the social origins of humanity. All over 
the world now, as far as I know it, such groups of men 
and women are talking, talking, in very much the same 
way, with the same doubtfulness about the future of 
civilization and a faith in certain ethical remedies which 
they think alone may save us. 

In an apartment house of Washington, where one lady 
and five men sat curled up in easy chairs, smoking ciga- 
rettes, sipping the last drops of some precious liquid, 
discussing the present troubles of Europe and the way 
of escape, I thought then, with an uncanny sense of the 

74 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

intellectual communion of human thought, of all the 
millions of such little companies who then, at that hour, 
in poor rooms or splendid rooms, were talking in the 
same strain, reaching out to the same hopes, relapsing 
perhaps into the same melancholy. One brain among 
us dominated the general discussion, the cold, analytical 
brain of Frank Simonds, one of the greatest journalists 
in the world, who did not sit back, like the others, in 
an easy chair, but at a desk, alert and keen. He sorted 
out the intellectual actions and reactions of the United 
States, England, France, and central Europe, as a 
chemist analyzing some compound. He balanced the 
credit and debit side of European economy, finding all 
in a bankrupt state. He examined the claim of the 
Allies to German reparation and dismissed them as 
impossible by the laws of arithmetic, and then weighed 
the advantage against the disadvantage of a strong 
Germany undermining the trade of the world by enor- 
mous exports, by which alone she could pay the money 
demanded, and a weak, dismembered Germany, ruining 
the world by lack of power to trade at all, to buy raw 
material, to send back manufactured goods. He 
sketched out the inevitable policy of France, keener to 
kill Germany than to save herself, discovering that by 
no freak of luck could she get back the price of all her 
losses so that her next chance of satisfaction lay in 
thrusting Germany deep into the mire, though all 
Europe would slip after her into the bog of ruin. His 
eyes bright with intellectual vision, his shrill, discordant 
voice rising into ironical laughter whenever sentiment 
tried to challenge his realism, leaving no loophole which 
could trip him up in argument, he prophesied the doom 
of Europe. A doom inevitable, except through one 
door of escape, and that a quicker abandonment of 
national egotism, a fellowship of nations, tearing down 
their trade barriers, demobilizing old hatreds and stand- 

75 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

ing armies, forgiving one another's debts, exchanging 
their fruits of industry on terms of free trade. 

It was the same conclusion reached by a Hungarian 
who came to see me in London. "Europe," he said, 
after terrible tales of misery in the old Austrian Empire, 
"is utterly doomed unless we abandon the old super- 
stitions of hatred, wash out the indemnities of war, 
and start afresh on a new phase of economic union 
among the countries of Europe. But there are too 
many fools about. We ought to start an International 
Society for the Suppression of Imbeciles!" He laughed 
when I told him that so many of us might be disqualified. 

IX 

It was in the Lotos Club of New York that I listened 
to one of the great leaders of the world, one of the 
great doctors of humanity, when Herbert C. Hoover 
sat in my bedroom and talked of the things he had seen 
and done and failed to do for stricken people. That 
was in March of 192 1, just before his appointment under 
the new President, Harding. 

My room was littered with shirts and collars, dis- 
ordered clothes, opened and unopened letters, for I 
had had no long warning of his coming, and no time 
(after a long journey) for tidiness. He paid no heed 
to that, but for a hour and a half sat in a big armchair, 
talking moodily, almost introspectively, with a look 
of sadness, except just now and then, when a glint of 
humor sparkled in his eyes for a second and then died 
out again. He is a square-built man, with a puggy, 
clean-shaven face, broad forehead and brown eyes, 
and has the simplicity of a peasant and the brain of a 
scientist who sees the problems of life without passion, 
without preconceived ideas, without sentiment, but in 

its essential truth, 

76 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

He spoke of the state of Europe. The condition of 
Austria, he said, was worse now than a year ago, fed 
by charity which he was still organizing in America, 
but not being healed of its social disease, for charity 
could do no real good, though it was a duty to do what 
it could in rescuing. He described his own work after 
the armistice as a kind of economic dictator, a position 
of which he was glad to get "quit." 

America had "pulled out" after spending a billion 
and a half dollars upon the relief of the stricken coun- 
tries, and for a time he had organized a system of credits 
and supplies which had helped to keep central Europe 
from certain starvation. But he could do nothing 
with European statesmen. They would agree on a 
reasonable conclusion when assembled round a table, 
and then go away and do nothing to carry out the idea 
— do everything to thwart it. All the new states got 
busy putting up frontiers against one another, with 
customs dues and all kinds of barriers to free intercourse 
and exchange. 

The Poles would not help themselves, and endless 
intrigue prevented recovery and health. From the 
Poles in America ioo million dollars had been sent to 
committees, and if that money had been used as credit 
for food supplies, the starving population would have 
been well nourished; but the money was passed through 
clearing houses of London and Paris so that Poland 
received perfumes, soaps, luxuries for her profiteers, 
instead of food for her people. 

In Serbia there was an immense store of surplus food 
which would have been easy of transport to the stricken 
populations of central Europe. But Serbia would not 
sell it eastward. She sought higher profits and sent 
it to Italy, France, and England, while food for her 
neighbors had to be sent all the way from America to 
keep them alive. 

77 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

"Europe must unite on economic lines or perish," 
said Hoover, and he did not speak lightly nor use care- 
less phrases. Those words on his lips were a sentence 
of death, if Europe did not heed his warning. 

I spoke to him of my hope in a new leadership, and in 
the coming of youth, and he smiled when he answered 
and said: "Youth is busy re-electing the old men. 
If Briand goes, he will be followed by Poincare into 
deeper reaction." He had seen no signs of a new 
faith in the League of Nations, but only the old men 
burking the real issues and playing with truth. 

Then he turned his thoughts to America and told 
me the tremendous difficulty of moving American imagi- 
nation in the direction of a world policy. The size of 
America, the provincial character of the American 
mind in the great Middle West and over the whole 
continent, makes them incapable of understanding 
how they are touched by disease in central Europe. 
He had tried to make them understand. When farm- 
ers of the Middle West had asked him: "What is 
Europe to us? Why is the price of hogs dropping 
down?" he had told them that before the war each 
individual German had obtained 25 grams of fat per 
day (if I remember the figures), which was not enough 
even then for the mass of industrial workers, and now 
they obtained only 12 grams of fat. The price of 
hogs in the Middle West depends on the German stand- 
ard of fat supply. . . . But they could not understand 
and do not remember. 

Hoover hoped that President Harding would call a 
world council and help to build up a new economic 
union in Europe and cause a plea for gradual and gen- 
eral disarmament. But he feared that if he did so the 
old diplomats of Europe would come to thwart it with 
their old animosities and subtleties and national in- 
trigues. Yet he hoped. ... It was because he hoped 

78 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

in a growing common sense, in the promise of youth, 
in the spreading of truth, that he went on working, 
instead of retiring to a private yacht in some sun- 
soaked sea, abandoning the world to its doom. . . . 
He saw just a glimmer of light ahead. 



x 

I perceived among all these individuals and all these 
groups, clubs, committees, and associations of Intellec- 
tuals in Europe and America, certain clear, definite, and 
simple ideas, however vaguely or subtly expressed, 
however complicated by social and ethical philosophy. 
They amount just to this: That the war was a homi- 
cidal insanity which exhausted all the reserves of wealth 
in Europe, and left such burdens of debt that they will 
never be redeemed. That, in spite of great human 
heroism on all sides, it left human nature in Europe 
demoralized and spiritually weakened. That the 
arrangement of peace ignored the devastating effects of 
war in all nations and the complete upheaval of its 
economic machinery, and created new boundaries, 
burdens, and rivalries which can only be maintained 
until another explosion happens, more monstrous than 
the last and destructive of white civilization as we 
know it and like it. 

What way out, then? What escape from this ap- 
proaching doom, whose shadow creeps over the souls of 
men ? Not by diplomatic conferences of the old school, 
establishing some new balance of power, not by one 
nation grabbing at the last reserves of another, not by 
military occupation of defaulting countries, nor finan- 
cial jugglings to postpone an evil day of reckoning in 
this nation or that, nor by assaults on Capital by Labor 
or attacks on Labor by Capital, but rather by a com- 
plete change in the structure of civilization and in the 

79 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

hearts of peoples. Under the impending menace of 
general ruin they believe that humanity in Europe may 
be inspired to make a clean jump across the abyss that 
opens before them, instead of crawling slowly to it 
and falling in. It must be a jump to a new world in 
which there must be utter abandonment of the herit- 
age of national hatred and superstitions, spell words 
and fetishes. The idealists demand a new religion of 
humanity based not upon force, but upon spiritual 
comradeship among common folk. They preach not a 
revolution by blood, but a revolution by love. They 
believe in love of country — the love of the beauty of 
one's countryside, of one's speech, of one's poetry — 
but not in the hatred of other people whose speech is 
different, though their beauty is as ours. They believe 
in the liberty of nations, but in a communion of inter- 
national peoples, not denying one another's liberty, 
rather protecting it, because of common interests, 
sympathies, and understandings across the present 
frontiers. Their hope in a possible cessation of war is 
founded upon their faith in the common sense of human- 
ity, if it can be liberated from superstitions, and the 
baser ignorance in which it is kept by artful brains, now 
that frightful experience has taught them the lesson 
of its folly. They admit the passions and cruelties 
and greeds still inherent in the heart of man, but they 
have a wonderful optimism in the power of ideals and the 
average virtue of common folk. . . . 

Unpractical visionaries! Dreamers out of touch with 
reality! Sentimentalists regardless of plain facts! Rev- 
olutionists with rose water! ''Intellectuals" playing 
with the fires which will consume them when the pas- 
sion of brutality, brutal life itself, makes an auto da fe 
of such weaklings. So the brutal mind, sure of history, 
with no faith but in force, gibes at them. 

Gibe for gibe, the Intellectuals can hold their own. 

80 



IDEALS OF THE HUMANISTS 

With witty poniard they can stick the bull fellow who 
rages at them. They know they will never live to see 
the fulfillment of their hopes, nor any quick harvest 
come from the seeds they sow. In secret hours they 
despair because of so much stupidity. Often they face 
the futility of their idealism. Many times they mock 
at their own little prescriptions for a world disease, and 
stare moodily at the approach of a greater downfall in 
which all Europe will be engulfed. Yet they go on 
talking, writing, trying to link up with one another, and 
to leaven a mass of ignorance, attacking tyranny in its 
strongholds, brutality everywhere, cruelty which hurts 
them more than its victims, teaching beauty, liberty 
of thought, large toleration, the right of humanity to 
joy and peace. Of another world beyond the grave 
they have no definite belief — not many of them. God 
means mostly to them the ideal love in the minds of 
men. They are humanists with their eyes on the pur- 
pose and the agony and the compensations of this life 
of men and women. Perhaps if they claimed religious 
authority, spoke as men ordained by a Divine Spirit, 
they would get a greater following, and lead the world 
forward on the impulse of some new religious fervor. 
But this would alter all their character. It would rob 
them of irony, of self-mockery. They would no longer 
have a tolerant understanding of human weakness, 
an indifference to the smaller frailties, a delicate sense 
of humor. They are not priests, prophets, or fanat- 
ics, but humanists. It is doubtful if many of them are 
of the stuff of martyrs, though I think Tomlinson would 
die with a whimsical melancholy on behalf of the truth 
as he sees it, and others, like Nevinson, are careless of 
death. 

They are not of much power in the world. There are 
other forces moving secretly, stirring in the psychology 
of peoples, working in subconscious evolutionary ways 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

toward some great change in our social state. But 
they have some little measure of influence on the acts 
and thoughts of peoples, and if they could get closer to 
their kind in all countries, in more intimate association 
inspired by great leadership, they might lift Europe 
out of its present morass to a cleaner and brighter height 
of human progress. 



Ill 

THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 



THE spiritual fires of white civilization seem to have 
burnt low since the war. In many countries they 
seem to have flickered out, leaving nothing but the dead 
ash of a hard materialism or the red embers of selfish 
passion — nowhere very visible the white light of the 
sacrificial flame. 

Many simple souls were startled by the rapid decline 
in ordinary morality which happened in war time, still 
more by the manifest lowering of spiritual ideals after 
the armistice among those who had seemed exalted to 
wonderful heights of self-sacrifice and spiritual purpose. 
They could not understand — it was hard to understand 
— how men who had been so obedient to discipline in 
the face of death, so reckless of their own lives and 
self-interest for their country's sake, should come 
home with sordid, squalid instincts, hating work, 
desiring nothing but material pleasure, striking, some- 
times rioting, in senseless conflicts between Capital and 
Labor, rebelling against authority, demanding the 
fleshpots of life with hungry appetite. Still less could 
they understand — those aloof, observing souls — how the 
war, which seemed to lift up human nature by the enor- 
mous enthusiasm of patriotism, could be followed by so 
many revelations of widespread immorality, general 
laxity of relationship between men and women, and 
distressing signs of a coarseness and cruelty of mind — 

83 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

in all classes — not noticeable before the war. Minis- 
ters of religion are aghast at the materialism of the times, 
and cry out in horror from their pulpits, not acknowledg- 
ing their own share of guilt. Newspaper moralists 
record each new aspect of social degeneracy, forgetting 
that the press which pays them is in a great measure 
the malign influence producing this mental condition 
of mass psychology. 

The fundamental mistake of those now surprised by 
the sudden "slump" in idealism is that the war was 
really a time of spiritual exaltation to all the people 
engaged in its passionate drama. To many it was. 
To many young men about to die for their country's 
sake, in the early days at least, it was a time of divine 
renunciation of earthly hopes, as one sees in the poems 
of Rupert Brooks and in the letters of thousands of 
boys to thousands of mothers. So also among the 
civilian peoples behind the lines there was a great stir- 
ring of spiritual faith in the excitement of unaccustomed 
service and sacrifice for their country's sake. The 
love of their fighting men was a great love, and that was 
good. They were ready to deny themselves everything 
so that "the boys" might have an extra touch of com- 
fort, some proof of love in their ordeal. They were 
ready to suffer privation, danger of air raids, the nervous 
rack of war time, not only for the sake of their youth 
in the fields of battle, but for the sake of the victory of 
ideals over the forces of evil. They were simple, clear- 
cut ideals in simple minds. Right over wrong, liberty 
over tyranny, and the safety of the mother country — 
or of the fatherland! Nothing can ever lessen the 
miracle of all that, at its best, in its purest nobility. 

Alas for the frailty of human nature, there were other 
strains of emotion, not pure or noble, in the deep tides 
and currents of war enthusiasm. All passions were 
intensified in that time, evil as well as good, low as well 

84 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

as high. The love of country and of young kinsmen 
was horribly blended with hatred and blood lust in 
the minds of many men, and more women, in whom 
the emotion of hate had a degrading and coarsening 
action. It was inflamed and kept at fever heat by 
atrocity stories — many of them false — and by a long, 
careful propaganda of hate, not ending with the end 
of the war, but continuing long after peace. It was the 
press (sometimes the pulpit) which stirred up and poked 
about the lowest instincts of the mob mind, with appeals 
to vengeance, cupidity, cruelty. That is not good 
food for the soul for seven years. It has a poisonous 
reaction, and deadens the sensitive nerve cells of the 
mind. 

In England after the war I have been astonished often 
by the insensitive quality of the popular mind to events 
which formerly would have aroused instant emotion, 
of indignation or pity. Horrible accounts of the star- 
vation of children in central Europe, narratives of 
whole populations, as in Vienna, striken by disease 
for lack of fats, did not touch the imagination of many 
people. Others reacted to such stories with harsh 
hostility. "Let them die!" was the answer I had from 
ladies I know. "Why should we feed boy babies who 
will grow up to be Huns?" That was logical in its 
cruelty and perfectly reasonable, if life is to be based on 
the law of cruelty and human nature to be divided 
always between "Huns" and "Allies." But it was 
new in modern England that women — not all, of course, 
but quite a lot of them — should be so callous of suffering 
childhood, even in the enemy's country. 

More surprising, more callous, was the indifference of 
the mass of English people to the reign of terror in 
Ireland. It was not that they hated the Sinn Feiners, 
or upheld the policy of reprisals by the Black-and-Tans. 
Theoretically the ranks of labor were sympathetic 

8$ 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

to the Irish rebels and hostile to the government's 
policy of coercion. Actually they did not care. The 
dreadful episodes of that struggle, ambushes and arson, 
assassinations by this side and the other, men dragged 
out of their beds and shot before their wives and chil- 
dren, the hanging of boys in batches, all that horror 
of guerrilla warfare and military repression, left English 
psychology stone-cold or just mildly interested. Before 
the war a storm of passion would have swept over 
England. There would have been a fierce partisanship, 
wild meetings, passionate protests, mob demonstrations. 
After the war only small groups of "intellectuals" 
excited themselves about the state of Ireland. In the 
streets I used to read newspaper placards with a sense 
of sickness — "Cork in Flames" — "British Soldiers Am- 
bushed near Dublin" — "Five More Policemen Shot in 
Ireland" — "Extensive Raids in Irish Towns" — "More 
Creameries Destroyed by Crown Forces." But the 
crowds went by, indifferent, in the Strand. No flame 
of indignation lit up their lackluster eyes. Ireland 
might be swept clean by fire and sword, for all they 
cared. Some filthy divorce case, the legal argument as 
to whether an archdeacon stayed at a hotel with an 
unknown lady, and always the latest betting results, 
were of far more importance in the mind of the people. 
The murder of a girl at the seaside by two degenerate 
young soldiers filled columns of the daily papers and the 
reports were read eagerly by millions. It was the sex 
interest which lured them and made those dull eyes light 
up. The killing of women in Ireland by British soldiers 
"shooting up" Irish villages did not raise a flicker of 
interest among the general public in England, nor 
command more than a few paragraphs in English papers. 
Enormous calamities, like the great famine in China, 
did not arouse one throb of emotion, one pitiful tear, as 
far as I could find, among English folk, and I was, like 

86 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

them, unable to respond emotionally to the most tragic 
happenings, unless they were of immediate personal 
interest. The immense long-continued tragedy of war 
had destroyed all power of emotional reaction to new 
and more remote abominations. "Oh, hell!" was the 
attitude of mind of the average man to any such epi- 
sode. A subtle coarsening process had overtaken the 
most refined minds and blunted their finer sensibilities. 
The least refined minds had just relapsed into brutish- 
ness, no longer held up to decency by the ethical stand- 
ard of the world. 

II 

For some time after the demobilization of the armies 
civilian populations were astonished and shocked by the 
disorderly conduct of many home-coming soldiers. 
Indeed, signs of trouble appeared immediately after the 
armistice, and the very men who had done their best to 
win the war, which was won, suddenly adopted an atti- 
tude of revolt against all discipline. On the western 
front there were disorderly demonstrations by bodies 
of men demanding instant demobilization and insulting 
elderly officers who threatened them with field punish- 
ment. To Whitehall and the War Office — the very 
Holy of Holies — came troops of soldiers from seaside 
camps in lorries and ambulances seized without per- 
mission. They demanded instant hearing from any 
general in authority. They were not to be awed by 
red tabs or brass hats. The power of life and death 
seemed to have gone out of those symbols of command, 
to the profound annoyance of those who wore them. 
"The men have been infected with Bolshevism. Foreign 
agents have been at work among 'em," were words 
spoken in a frightened way by elderly gentlemen in 
London clubs. "I 'd turn the machine guns on to them," 
was the advice of others who, not long before, had been 

87 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

acclaiming those men as heroes and the saviors of old 
England. What had happened? In another book — 
Now It Can Be Told — I have shown a little of what 
had happened in the spirit of the men who had fought 
— their disillusionment with the ideals of war, their 
bitterness with the old men in the high places of com- 
mand, responsible for much unnecessary slaughter, 
their sudden revulsion against discipline when the com- 
ing of peace seemed to break all need of it, their des- 
perate desire to get out of khaki and into "civies" 
again, and their utter sickening weariness of "spit and 
polish," parade, all the deadening routine of military- 
life as soon as the passionate purpose of the war had gone 
out of it. It was not Bolshevism that had been at 
work, but the ordinary actions and reactions of human 
nature. 

Worse things happened later, things not so natural 
or pardonable as the haste of men to be demobilized, 
though partly due to the fret of waiting for freedom. 
Soldiers — and especially Canadian soldiers — ran amuck 
in camps and towns, attacked police, looted shops, 
stormed town halls, fought in a brutal, demoniacal way 
with the guardians of law and order. There was some- 
thing unreasonable in these sudden gusts of fury, some- 
thing that looked like madness, as in the case of young 
officers even who took part in these affrays and after- 
ward swore, as I think sincerely, that they could re- 
member nothing of how they came to be mixed up in 
the rioting, or what they had done. It was just a sud- 
den lack of self-control, a sudden uprising of ungov- 
ernable and unreasoning passion. 

It was part of that general disease which doctors called 
"shell shock," though it afflicted men and women far 
behind the lines, aloof from shell fire, the long nagging 
of the war upon the nervous system until it was all 
worn and frayed, the high tension of war excitement 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

which suddenly snapped when the armistice was signed, 
and the subconscious effect of war's liberating influences 
upon the animal and moral restraints of civilized nature. 
The killing of men had been the work of life, the purpose 
of life, for four and a half years. To the gentle lady 
knitting comforters for the Red Cross that purpose had 
been a subconscious influence. She was aware of 
death in the mass, the slaughter of the world's youth, 
the blood and iron of war. Her gentility had been a 
little hardened. She was no longer shrinking and sen- 
sitive at the thought of life's brutality. Even she, 
with her taper fingers, had lost something of refinement. 
How much more the man who had walked through 
fields of dead, whose daily training was to kill better, who 
had killed! The miracle is that so many thousands of 
decent men — so many millions — remained decent, un- 
tainted by blood lust, clean in mind and heart. It 
was inevitable that others should be brutalized, and that 
when, after the war, some accidental happening stirred 
their anger, or their lust, they behaved like primitive 
men. They had been taught "caveman stuff," as the 
Americans call it, while they sat in lousy dugouts 
under fire. There was an epidemic of foul crime in 
England, France, Italy, other countries. Young soldiers 
murdered lonely girls after horrible brutality. In 
drunken brawls they fought one another like gorillas. . . . 
During the great coal strike in England, the govern- 
ment called up the Reservists to maintain order in case 
of rioting by the miners and the army of unemployed. 
For the most part the miners behaved like lambs, but 
at Aldershot, Woolwich, and other places the Reservists, 
all "veterans" of the Great War, broke bounds and 
started looting and rioting until they were dispersed by 
cavalry. "Bolshevism!" whispered frightened politi- 
cians, using the new spell word to explain every symp- 
tom of social unrest. But in this case what was happen- 
7 89 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

ing was the disgust of men thrust back into the discipline 
from which they had escaped, after too much of it 
and after they had thrown it to the four winds in the 
liberty they had found in peace. Some of them, by 
that sudden relaxation of restraint, after a life in which 
every hour of their day was ordered, had lapsed into a 
weak lawlessness of soul, incapable of self-control, 
nervy, restless, lazy not of set purpose, but spiritually 
lax, and with a mental and physical resentment to 
concentrated work. In the mass psychology of peoples 
with the war experience, there was this loosening of old 
restraints, and after the enormous, driving impulses of 
war, life seemed purposeless and without any sanc- 
tions for discipline. No new impluse higher than self- 
interest replaced the spiritual ideal of sacrifice. The 
mob, without leadership, contemptuous of those who 
claimed to be leaders, cynical of idealists who had brought 
the world to a sorry pass, followed its own instincts, 
devoted itself to its own immediate interests, while 
many people lower than the average of the crowd (whose 
instincts are mainly sound) just dropped back into the 
selfishness of the brutes and adopted the brute code as 
their law of life. 



in 

One strange after-effect of war, startling the moralist 
— judge or jurymen — by its devastating epidemic, was 
the ruin of homes by divorce. Here it seems, except 
to fanatics who favor divorce as something good and 
admirable in itself, is a clear proof of degradation in 
social morality — the slippery slope to perdition in Chris- 
tian civilization. I hate figures because often they 
confuse the mind instead of clearing it, but I must 
quote here the divorce statistics of England, which 
truly show in a dramatic and shocking way the feverish 

90 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

increase in numbers of those who, in a country still in- 
stinctively jealous of the marriage laws, have gone to 
law to break their partnership. 



Year 



1913 
I914 

1915 
I916 
1917 
I9I8 
1919 
1920 



Dissolution 


of Marriage 


Nullity of Marriage 


Husbands' 
Petition 


Wives ' 
Petition 


Husbands' 
Petition 


Wives' 
Petition 


312 
436 
348 


234 

397 
320 


13 

7 
6 


18 
16 

6 


515 
641 


421 

305 


11 

12 


7 

20 


727 


355 


15 


14 


I,2l6 

2>35i 


413 
690 


10 

22 


15 

27 



In 1921, for which I have not the complete figures, 
the numbers mount higher, and in one week at the 
beginning of May six hundred cases were heard in 
the courts. 

It will be seen that in 1920 there were over three 
thousand divorce cases, or ten times as many as in 
the year before the war. Yet it is probable that that 
number is insignificant in comparison with all the 
homes in which husbands and wives live in miserable 
alliance, their spiritual bond having been utterly broken, 
though they do not apply for dissolution of marriage for 
lack of money or in fear of scandal. It has been a 
world malady directly due to the war in many strange, 
subtle ways. "I do not know one man who went to 
France now living with his wife again," I was told by 
an American lady of high social standing. I protested 
against her exaggeration, knowing many American 
soldiers still happily married, and asked her to think 
again and modify her statement, but she said: "I may 
be unfortunate in my friends, but that is actually my 
experience of their home life. " 

9i 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

How can one account for this tragedy of lives ? What 
was the influence of environment and adventure which 
led to such disloyalty between those who had loved ? 
For in many cases these divorces are not revelations of 
ordinary immorality by men and women of low character. 
On the contrary, many of them have been brought before 
the law by people of exceptional culture, of good social 
reputation, and of long-tried virtue. Middle-aged men, 
fathers of families, who lived honest humdrum lives, 
contented and happy to all appearances, suddenly 
broke away, changed all their character, betrayed 
women who had been utterly faithful to them. So 
was it with many women. With younger couples it 
is easier to understand. During war time they married 
in haste and in peace time repented at leisure. When 
the menace of the war was present, youth took what it 
could quickly, before death could intervene, grabbed at 
life and immediate joy. I knew many boys — airmen 
and company officers, machine gunners, and observ- 
ers — who knew that seven days' leave might be their 
last chance of life. One more little "stunt" above the 
clouds, one more little "show" across No-Man's Land, 
and for them no more. They loved life. Its beauty 
was boundless to them. They felt their youth with 
vital intensity of desire. To get "all in" while they 
had the time was their philosophy, and marriage with 
a pretty girl was part of the life they would not miss, 
though it might be only for a splendid week. It was so 
easy. The girls were of the same philosophy. They 
too were grabbing at life, seeking fulfillment of youth, 
before all the boys died. It did not matter very much 
which boy they married. They were all so splendid 
and so brave. They were life — under the menace of 
death. . . . 

Youth was right. In the mass it was wise, with sure 
instinct, Mother Nature created their impulses to 

92 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

repair so much destruction of life. But there were 
penalties. Life's little ironies broke in to mock at 
romance. Many of the boys did not die, though the 
odds were against them. They came home, badly 
or lightly wounded, nerve shaken, fretful with the 
strange and deadly boredom of peace for which they 
had longed. They could not get jobs, so many of them, 
for so long a time, and after trudging for jobs came back 
home dispirited, bad-tempered, quick to resent the little 
irritations of domestic ways. Young wives were very 
lonely in war, and hated loneliness and sought the 
companionship of their husbands' friends, home on 
leave. "Allah is great, but juxtaposition is greater." 
Poor children of life, so jgnorant of their own quality, 
their own emotion, the tides of human nature. Here 
is nothing to marvel at, especially at a time when all 
laws of life were being rudely challenged, all faith was 
being questioned, and religion was irreconcilable in many 
souls with war's peculiar code. 

More difficult to understand was the sudden break- 
down of older men, not ignorant of their own nature, 
and with long records of loyalty. "How is it," I was 
asked by a frank-spoken lady, "that men with ladies 
as their wives, beautiful women, all the highest refine- 
ment of civilization in their homes, and all the tradi- 
tion of training behind them, fell to the first little slut 
they saw in the streets of Paris, or went astray in low 
haunts?" It was not quite so bad as that, though it 
was bad. 

I explain such mysteries in a groping way. The war 
was a mighty aberration of all restraints built up by 
the careful checks and boundaries of the civilized code, 
that powerful system, stronger than religion, which 
we know as Public Opinion. Human nature is always 
secretly in revolt against these checks. There is an 
errant libertism in the soul of every man who sees en- 

93 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

ticing byways of pleasure, deductive short cuts to joy, 
across which is written the harsh word of the social 
law, "No Thoroughfare." Everywhere through the 
quiet life of peace in quiet towns, these signboards are 
staring in the sight of men, and because of the watchful 
eyes of Public Opinion they dare not trespass. But 
war flung all these signboards down. Public Opinion 
altered its own bearings. Its fixed principles slipped. 
In the convulsion of war it lost its faith. Men went 
out to France or other fronts in an adventure which 
changed all life and themselves utterly. It had no 
link with the past, and its future was most uncertain. 
These men in khaki uniforms were not the same men 
as those who had been in civil clothes, with white 
collars and cuffs and all, in city offices or pleasant 
drawing-rooms. They were in a different world and a 
different life, doing things utterly remote from all 
their previous experience, and for the most part skep- 
tical of ever returning to the life they had known. 
They were revitalized. The old trammels fell from 
them. They were but soldiers of fortune in an un- 
ending war. They, too, had to grab quickly at any 
passing chance of pleasure, lest they should be too 
late. And the job they had to do was ugly, dirty, 
cruel. It would end, perhaps, in a dirty kind of 
death. Once up in the trenches and they would be 
far from any kind of life's beauty. Behind the lines, 
in Paris, Amiens, London, there was still beauty, 
feminine softness, which was the opposite of all that 
harshness of war's discipline. The rustle of silk sounded 
better than the scream of a shell. They were not dis- 
loyal to their wives at home. They were other men 
in another world — born anew. So they argued, and 
wondered at themselves. 

After the war they were different again. When they 
went home they pretended they were the same. They 

94 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

dressed up in the same old clothes, sat at the same old 
table, and knew, so many of them, that the men they 
pretended to be were dead and that they were mas- 
queraders of their own ghosts. The woman opposite 
was no longer the wife of this man who sat glancing at 
her now and then with searching eyes. She had changed, 
too, during these years of war. She too had had secret 
adventures of the soul. They had actually been divorced 
before quarrels, open infidelities, passionate endeavors 
for reconciliation, the cold and dreadful certainty that 
the old love was dead, led them to state their case before 
the court. 

Strange and terrible revelations! After twenty years 
of married life, men with grown-up children whom they 
had loved devotedly sought a dissolution of marriage 
with women who had believed in their eternal faith — 
or it was the other way about. Some hideous, tremendous 
impulse, long hidden in subconsciousness, had broken 
its fetters. Men after the years of war had a sense of 
second youth at their home-coming. They did not 
desire a return to the old life, but the beginning of a 
new life. Some other woman offered them that. After 
the tremendous excitement of the war impulse they 
craved for some new impulse equally dominating and 
exciting. New love or its counterfeit provided them 
with this sensation. I believe in hundreds of cases this 
was the psychology of their broken partnership, and 
in the woman's case it was no different. Yet by 
explaining we do not condone. " Tout savoir, cest 
tout pardonner! " That is true, but the weakening of 
resistance in human nature to the evil of disloyalty is 
a serious matter for civilization. Lack of self-control 
is not to be lightly disregarded, nor replaced by easy 
allegiance to "the spirit of liberty." Christianity, 
anyhow, must be shipwrecked on these shifting sands, 
and even the inherited code of morals which in many 

95 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

countries, as in England, is for the mass of people the 
sole remaining heritage of Christian faith. 



IV 

Is Christianity itself going down, after nineteen cen- 
turies of struggle to hold its authority as the religion 
in which humanity may find its ultimate reason for 
obedience and sacrifice, and its supreme comfort in a 
world of discomfort — this "vale of tears"? Even 
before the war there had been a steady growth of skep- 
ticism and revolt, less passionate, but more deadly than 
in the centuries of conflict between Protestantism and 
Catholicism, or the days of challenge between science 
and faith. That old warfare had quieted down. In 
intellectual circles there was a wider tolerance, on both 
sides. Science had yielded some of its "certainties" 
to faith. Religion, even inside the Catholic Church, 
had adopted some of the claims of science, admitting 
the possibility of evolution, though not accepting asser- 
tions of absolute proof, revising its geological dates, not 
standing rigidly to the literal interpretation of Old 
Testament stories. In many ways religion seemed to 
be regaining old ground, capturing new fields of mission- 
ary enterprise. The advance of Catholicism in England 
and the United States was remarkable in mere num- 
bers, although it must be reckoned with the increase 
in population. But among Protestant denominations, 
and in nominally Catholic countries, like France and 
Italy, there had been a steady abandonment of religious 
fervor, a quite definite undermining of faith in Chris- 
tian dogma by skeptical philosophy, reaching down to 
the humblest classes. It was not, as I have said, a 
fierce skepticism. It was stolid indifference. People 
could not be "bothered" with religious controversy. 
There had been too much of it. They had no ill will 

96 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

to folk who liked to go to church — any old church — 
but they preferred to stay away. Less and less to the 
middle classes and laboring classes did religion seem 
to have any real relationship with life and death. The 
parsons talked a lot of stuff which was obviously in- 
sincere. At any rate, they were all quarreling with 
one another as to what it really meant — flatly contradict- 
ing one another. In France and Italy the old Latin 
skepticism and cynicism was prevailing, even in the 
peasantry, and the young intellectuals of France, in 
spite of new movements among them, to make religion 
"good form" again, could not resist the genial incre- 
dulities of Anatole France, literary successor to Vol- 
taire, Rabelais, and all the master skeptics of their 
literary heritage. The harsh and brutal realism of 
Zola and his school, their onslaught upon faith, had 
become old-fashioned. As in England, indifference 
rather than challenge was the new spirit. Even Catholic 
Frenchmen, or many of them, thought themselves 
among the faithful if they married in church, baptized 
their children, and received the last sacraments before 
death. Otherwise they did not trouble the church, 
though they doffed their hats to the village priest and 
thought him a very good fellow if he did not poke his 
nose into their private affairs. 

The state of religious life before the war in France 
was rather stagnant, like this. Only in the universi- 
ties and among the aristocracy was there an attempt, 
not altogether unsuccessful, to revive the Catholic 
spirit as part of the noble heritage of France, and to 
associate it with a patriotism which foresaw the new 
ordeal of war with Germany. The army chiefs, like 
Foch and Castelnau — the inner clique of the High 
Command — were Catholics of the old school, devout 
and firm in the faith that France was ordained by 
God to attain a new and spiritual victory over the 

97 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

barbarians who were now called "Bodies." The 
cult of Jeanne d'Arc became the fashion. On the 
other side the syndicalists and labor parties generally 
attacked the Church with contempt and scurrility as 
the great power of reaction, and France was ruled by 
politicians who had supported destruction of Church 
and state, and denounced Catholicism with ridicule 
and blasphemy. 

In Prussia, the chosen kingdom of "the good old 
German God" as the Kaiser used to say, with an air 
of genial patronage, there had been a rapid decline in 
religious and spiritual standards, according to many 
competent observers, even of their own race. Ever 
since the victory of 1870 the Prussian people had 
become more and more arrogant, selfish, and material- 
istic. Their Protestantism had always been harsh in 
its character, without the kindness and sweet-tempered 
quality of our own denominations after the mellowing 
of the old Puritan austerities or the mild and sentimen- 
tal spirit of the old German tradition in other parts of 
the Empire. But the Prussian character deteriorated 
when its Protestantism was abandoned for a gross 
materialism, a blatant and bullying atheism, with no 
more exalted faith than that of world empire under 
Prussian domination. I am not one of those who be- 
lieve that every Prussian is possessed by seven devils, 
that by the very shape of his head he is outside the 
kinship of the European family, and that the mark of 
the beast is upon him. That seems to me an exagger- 
ation convicting us of self-conceit, national self-com- 
placency, and Phariseeism closely approaching the very 
characteristics we are condemning. If the Prussian 
believed before the war that he was the noblest type 
of human being, and that the Empire he had founded 
had the close support of God, and that his destiny, his 
very duty, was to rule less civilized peoples, it must 

98 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

be admitted that there have been Englishmen with 
the same conceit of themselves. I have met them at 
club dinners, and have listened to their proclamation 
of such simple faith. But in Prussia, and perhaps to 
a less degree in other parts of Germany, this stirring 
of national confidence in a future of enormous conquest 
was supported by brutal qualities deliberately devel- 
oped by education and public opinion, and as that 
educational influence deepened it created a degrada- 
tion of morality. Spiritual values sank to a low level, 
and in their painting, their architecture, their drama, 
and their social amusements one saw a kind of morbid 
defiance of all that is gentle and refining in life. The 
word "stark" was a kind of spell upon them. Worse 
than that, though that was bad and enervating, a 
strain of degenerate vice attacked them. Without 
raking up the filth of war propaganda, it must be said 
that night life in Berlin, for instance, was worse than 
anything in cities like Paris or London (whose virtue 
was not unchallenged!), worse in coarseness and com- 
plete abandonment of any decent code. In the army 
the Prussian military caste was tainted with very 
abominable corruption. Prussia, in spite of many 
fair qualities and many good people, was governed by 
a spirit of evil. As far back as 1872 one old watcher 
of life, Cardinal Manning, saw the sowing of these 
weeds in the Prussian spirit, and in prophetic words 
foretold what now has happened: 

The aberrations of a false philosophy — the inflation of false 
science — the pride of unbelief — and the contemptuous scorn of those 
who believe — are preparing Germany for an overthrow or for suicide. 

All was not well with Christianity before the war. 
When war came it was in danger. Its own priests and 
ministers endangered it. Adopting the material watch- 
words, in England as well as in Germany, proclaiming 

99 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

God and the justice of God to be on the side of their 
own battalions, in Germany as well as in England and 
France, in Austria as well as in Italy, they forgot that 
simple lads who had been to church or had at least 
heard the words "God is Love," or "Thou shalt not 
kill, " or " Love one another, " or " Forgive your enemies," 
asked themselves in dugouts and ditches whether there 
could be any divine authority for such commands 
when they were told, by the very men who preached 
them, not to love, but to hate; not to forgive, but to kill. 
They were quite certain they had to kill. That was 
obvious, disgusting though it was to most of them. 
Therefore what was the truth of a religion which said, 
"Thou shalt not kill"? Many of them after a time, by 
fear or by weariness or by some queer idealism, inartic- 
ulate, but becoming more clearly conscious and con- 
vincing as the war dragged on in what seemed inter- 
minable slaughter, came to criticize the whole meaning 
of the war, to thrust its guilt not only upon Germany, 
but upon the system of civilization which had made 
it possible, and the leaders of that civilization, and the 
teachers. 

They worried out crude little syllogisms. " If Christi- 
anity is right, then war is wrong, or if war is right (or 
this war), then Christianity is a lie." And again: "Every- 
thing that I was taught not to do I am now taught to 
do, and ordered to do. That means that the whole 
moral code under which I was brought up was hypoc- 
risy to keep me quiet. I was taught not to lie, but the 
newspapers and the politicians lie all the time, and make 
a virtue of it. I was taught to say my prayers to a good, 
kind, loving God Who would answer them. But when 
my pal Bill prayed that he might get through that raid 
for the sake of his wife and kids (I heard him when he 
thought I slept), a shell came and blew his blooming 
head off — and anyhow I don't see any signs of a good, 

ioo 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

kind, loving God. . . . Where is God, anyway, in this 
year 1914 (or 1917), and what proot is there of His 
interest in humanity ? Or what proof is there of human- 
ity's interest in Him? Christianity has been going a 
long time. Is this the result of it? It's all a queer 
mix-up. The Germans seem a pious crowd. Before 
every battle they pray and take the sacraments, just 
like some of us, only more so. Is God helping them or 
us ? .... By God ! the weather seems to favor 'em ?" 

Less crudely than that, but with higher perplexities, 
secret indignation of soul, other men, more cultured, 
questioned the truth of Christian faith, and could not 
reconcile it with the business in hand. Nor could they 
acquit its ministers of insincerity. They became 
skeptics even in the presence of death, or found some 
queer little shrine of faith of their own, some pagan 
creed of stoicism or fatalism, at which they worshiped, 
for comfort's sake. 

Many of them were like that, as I have told in other 
writings. Many of them in spite of others who were 
glad of their chaplains, who became more fervent in 
religious duties, who became converts to Catholicism 
and then fell in battle like Christian martyrs to the 
beasts, who carved the sign of the Cross in the chalk 
of their dugouts — I have one of those chalk crosses 
now in a cabinet of relics — or, like the French at Ver- 
melles, made a little altar to Notre Dame des Tranchees, 
and crowded round a soldier priest with bent heads, 
receiving from his earthy hands the body of Christ in 
the mystery of the Sacrament, with childlike faith, 
before they died. (Not one escaped in that part of 
the line.) 



I will not dwell on what happened in war. I have 
written that. Here I would write of what happened 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

after the war and is now in action. There has been 
no spiritual revival. Christianity has not marched to 
new victories. It is still menaced with heavy losses, 
a general retreat all along the line of human society. 
Christian priests and pastors have not yet dispelled 
the doubt and darkness that came over the spirit of 
many men. Their authority and their faith are still 
challenged and a greater indifference than that before 
the war is in the minds of people toward the claims 
of Christian dogma. 

The enormous turmoils of war loosened ill the con- 
trols of character, upheaved old traditions of thought 
and conduct and belief. The enormous turmoil of 
peace loosened them still more, until they rattle. The 
brakes of the civilized world will not hold back the 
social machine as it speeds downhill. 

The effect of peace was, at the time, like a sudden 
liberation of souls in bondage. The world breathed a 
deep sigh and then ran riot. I think now as I write of 
all the wild scenes I saw in Beligum and France and 
England during the celebration of the armistice and 
peace. They were not Christian in their general 
manifestation. It is true that the churches were 
thronged, that many prayers of thanksgiving were 
uttered, but in the streets of great cities and of small 
it was a Bacchanalia absolutely pagan. The women 
behaved like maenads and hamadryads, dancing, sing- 
ing, giving themselves up to the joy of life which had 
been so long denied. Wild-eyed, ecstatic, with abandon- 
ment of all restraint, they went to the festivals of the 
streets to celebrate the return of the heroes. Youth 
had been reprieved. Old Man Death had been 
cheated of his last harvest of boys. Love had come 
back. 

Love was unlicensed in the streets. Quick greetings, 
quick meetings, what mattered in the weeks of armis- 

I02 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

tice? The soldiers of the Allies — English, French, 
Belgian, American, Italian — the prisoners of all the 
armies swarming through the lines again, the women 
who had waited for them, the girls who had been im- 
patient of their coming, mingled in the crowds of joy 
and knew no law but that. Only those who were cold 
and old resisted the carnival. Only those who were 
sad and solitary with remembrance. 

It was then that the dancing mania took possession 
of Europe. Even in Germany, defeated, despondent, 
still a little hungry, youth danced in the Bierhalle and 
Weinstube, as I saw them on the Rhine. Even in 
Vienna, where children starved and could not sit up 
with rickety limbs, there was dancing in the gilded 
restaurants. I made a tour in Europe through many 
cities and countries, and everywhere the music of jazz 
bands, the wild rhythm of them, throbbed in my ears 
to the beat of dancing feet. 

I remember now one little picture among many 
others of that dancing time. It was on the digue at 
Zoute Knocke, close to Zeebrugge, where there was 
the hell of war and where still the wreckage of it lay 
about. 

There were charming girls there of the best Belgian 
families, and English girls, and Americans, and Russians, 
and Poles, and Czecho-Slovaks, with young men who, 
I found, had been prisoners in Germany, or officers at 
Dixmude, or in a pleasant exile in England, during the 
war. 

The orchestra for the dance was not magnificent. It 
was a simple piano-organ worked by the untiring arms 
of a humble philanthropist, not without reward. It 
played "Tipperary" and "The Broken Doll" un- 
ceasingly, to the rhythm of the fox-trot and the 
one-step. 

103 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

The light from the cafe windows splashed across the 
roadway, making shadow pictures on the pavement of 
the dancers who came within its gleam, whose frocks 
and faces were touched by its glamour until they danced 
into the gloom beyond that range of radiance where 
there was night and the pale sea. 

Outside the cafes sat the fathers and mothers of the 
dancers, smiling as they watched the swaying of young 
couples, the fantastic steps, the queer rhythmic kaleido- 
scope of that dance on the digue. 

The wind was strong. It caught many a tress and 
blew it across the laughing face of a girl. It wafted 
off the hats of the boys and made their hair wild. Frocks 
were tossed into billows above long white stockings and 
long black stockings, and in and out of the grown-up 
dancers small children danced, wonderfully learned in 
the latest steps, like little marionettes. 

Next to me sat a man who had factories at Ypres and 
Bailleul and Messines, where now there are only ashes 
and the rags and bones of buildings. Some of his girls 
were dancing there, and he smiled as he watched them 
pass, greeting him with their eyes, over the shoulders 
of their cavaliers. 

"It is youth that dances on the edge of ruin," he 
said in French. "It is youth that dances to the tune 
of life." 

Another picture comes to my mind — night in the 
Grande Place of Brussels with shadow pictures in the 
windows of the old guildhouses near the Hotel de Ville 
and the Maison du Roi. 

Here three centuries ago princes and princesses sat 
down to banquets in those mansions, and the old Place 
itself with its beauty of gilded pillars and sculptured 
stonework, still holding all the memory of the golden 
age in Flanders, was crowded with nobles and ladies and 
great merchants coming and going up the flights of steps, 

104 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

hollowed out now by the tread of many feet, which 
lead into the paneled rooms. 

I heard music through open windows and went up- 
stairs into one of those old rooms. It was thronged 
with young men and women of humble class, dancing 
together. 

In the minstrel's gallery sat a company of large musi- 
cians playing large instruments loudly. To the blaring 
noise of it the Flemish dancers surged round, doing the 
fox-trot and the two-step. The boys danced in bowler 
hats and billycocks, and the ladies combed their hair 
between the dances. A negro in a black suit and felt 
hat came in with a big black box and opened it solemnly. 
I expected to see a magic carpet brought out, or some 
wizardry, but he sold lollipops to girls who tried to 
steal them. The boys banged the girls about good- 
naturedly in the Flemish style. The girls danced often 
with each other, with a wonderful knowledge of the 
latest steps. Now and then a boy and girl sat down 
heavily together on the boards, and there were shrieks 
of laughter. Two girls spoke to me in English. One 
of them showed me the portraits of her lovers. There 
were twenty of them, and all young English soldiers. 
She was sorry the war was over. . . . Another girl, 
waxen-faced, dark-eyed, ugly, kept telling me about a 
boy named Harry whom she had loved. They had 
lived together for a month, and when he went she wept 
her heart away. 

A young Belgian soldier spoke to me and explained 
the spirit of the company. 

"For five years there was war," he said; "now there 
is pleasure. We wish to make up for those five years. 
It is the same with everybody. We are forgetting the 
war and finding the pleasure of life." 

"Are there any who remember?" I asked. 

He shrugged his shoulders. "The poor devils with 
8 105 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

only one leg, or no legs, cannot dance. There are others 
who are blind. Some are rotten with disease. The 
lucky ones dance. It is our luck." 

And everywhere in Europe the lucky ones danced. 



VI 

Then gradually came disillusionment, disgust, except 
where youth refused to renounce its rights. For a 
year or more in some countries like England, for much 
less in others, governments and peoples maintained 
a fictitious show of prosperity, persuaded themselves 
that their debts did not exist, that their prosperity was 
assured, now that victory had come. In England the 
demobilized soldiers lived on doles and pensions, and 
the time of their withdrawal, when they must go to work 
again, was several times postponed. France was buoyed 
up by large promises of the fruits of victory, and, though 
prices soared to a fantastic height, wages rose, too, to 
most of them. I, and many others wiser than I, prophe- 
sied the coming of reality and was called a gloomy dog 
for such dark forebodings. But it came. Steadily 
reality bore down again the fiction of national arith- 
metic, international rivalry. Paper money would not 
buy real things. Real things must be made by hard 
work. Those who could not work must starve. 
Disease in one part of Europe would cause ill health 
in other parts, and Russia, Poland, Austria, were 
stricken with social ruin. Manufacturers would find 
production futile if they could find no markets to buy 
their goods. They could not longer pay high wages, 
or any wages, if markets were shut against them. Unem- 
ployment would grow apace if Europe did not set its 
house in order by reconciliation and free trade in 
peace. . . . 

Those things happened in England, in many countries, 

1 06 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

even in the United States of America, untouched, as 
they believed, by European conditions. And as they 
happened, the psychology of peoples was affected by 
bitterness and ill will and suspicion and anger. Where 
were all the fine promises made to them in war? "A 
land fit for heroes to live in!" That was the promise 
to British soldiers. "The fruits of victory!" had 
been the promise to the peoples of France. Instead, 
taxation bore down with crushing burdens. Poverty 
showed its ugly head, men who had been heroes in 
the war broke their hearts against the hardness of this 
peace. 

Even that was insecure. Wars and rumors of war 
shook the ground of eastern Europe and of Asia with 
tr emblements de terre that caused uneasiness and alarm 
on our side of the Continent. The future, for boys old 
enough to rejoice at peace, was covered with a black 
pall. The great conflict had been called "a war to 
end war. " This peace looked like a peace to end peace. 
By old stupidities or new devilries, the statesmen of 
Europe seemed to have made a hopeless mess of victory. 
The peoples looked for new leaders who did not come. 
Under the tightening pressure of war burdens and peace 
failures, they became hard, cynical, selfish. It was a 
fight now, not for high ideals, but for wages that would 
not be below the 1914 standard of living, reckoned in 
actual values. It was no longer to be a search for a 
new world, but a struggle for existence. Not idealism, 
but materialism, was the gospel of many who for a time 
had been generous in sacrifice, splendidly forgetful of 
self. In that state of selfishness are we now, as I write 
this book. 

Yet, by a strange and tragic contradiction, there has 
been no time in modern history when the peoples of 
the old civilization have been so desperately eager for 
spiritual guidance. There is a great thirst for spiritual 

107 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

refreshment among those in the dry desert of our present 
discontent. I find expression of that among many men 
and women not "religious" in temperament nor of 
sentimental type, but rather among cynics and ironists 
and realists. In conversation, at the end of pessimism, 
they are apt to admit that "nothing can save us all 
but some new prophet of God." Or they cry out for 
some new faith to inspire nations with some tremendous 
spiritual impulse leading to renunciation of selfish 
ambitions, to a cleansing of hearts. Out of the House 
of Commons, that assembly of "hard-faced men who 
look as if they had done extremely well out of the war," 
out of that House of Worldly Wisemen, came a plea 
for "a spiritual lead." 

In the Middle Ages western Europe was united by a single idea 
which sent the common man in his hundreds of thousands away 
to the Crusades; which enshrined itself in countless wonderful 
cathedrals, abbeys, churches; which produced great schools of 
philosophy and art, great epic poems, and great institutions. It 
expressed itself in a theory of government manifested in Holy 
Roman Empire and Holy Catholic Church. It expressed itself 
likewise in the lives of great men and in the royalty of St. Louis, the 
sainthood of St. Francis, the statesmanship of Hildebrand. This 
ideal, like all the ideals by which the great societies of men in the 
long past of our race have been fashioned, wore out. . . . To-day we 
possess no common ideal. We thrill with no common hope. We 
tremble at no common terror. The nations of Europe are all adrift 
one from another, and the classes within each nation have likewise 
fallen asunder. The respect for real superiorities has vanished, 
along with that for the traditional superiorities. Rank rests on no 
recognized sanction. We are all one as good as another. Vulgar 
ostentation replaces true distinction. The old catchwords are 
meaningless. . . . The world of our day languishes for a new St. 
Francis who shall call it to a new knowledge of itself. He will not 
have to go far for his message. It is not in Heaven, neither is it 
beyond the sea, "but the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, 
and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it." Who will utter the word 
in all simplicity? The world is waiting for his voice. Let him plainly 
set before us "life and good, and death and evil." There is no doubt 
which we shall choose. 

108 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

So wrote from the smoking room of the House of 
Commons — reeking with cynicism and haunted by the 
betrayal of all ideals — Sir Martin Conway, M.P., to 
the office of the Times. 

"We thrill with no common hope," he said; "we trem- 
ble at no common terror. " He is right in thinking so, in 
so far as nations are still divided and peoples are unable 
to link up their hopes and their terror in one united 
faith and action. Yet I see beneath the Europe of our 
present state the same hopes and the same terror stirring 
among all people, and out of them will come, I believe, 
the salvation of civilization, if it is to be saved. Even 
this materialism of which I have been writing is largely 
the bitterness of peoples whose ideals have been frus- 
trated but not killed, and who grab at petty, selfish 
things because they seem the way to larger hopes. A 
good deal of the social unrest, the spirit of revolt among 
us, the violence of revolution, is due to "common 
hopes" and "common terror," working crudely in 
many minds in many nations. The terror is the fear 
of new and devastating wars thrust upon the peoples 
by evil statesmanship or created by their own passions. 
To avoid that terror, the spirit of democracy is running 
about like a rat in a trap, wild-eyed, fierce with fear. 
It was not the love of militarism, but the fear of another 
war, which caused the French people to demand ruthless 
sanctions against the Germans, to support the Polish 
alliance, to flame with anger against the English who 
spoke of fair play even to Germany. And it was not a 
different motive, but the same, which led the English 
democrats to protest against too harsh a treatment of 
Germany, because they believed that only by reconcili- 
ation and generosity to the beaten enemy, whose strength 
would one day be great again, could Europe, and France 
herself, be saved from another orgy of massacre. The 
dangerous philosophy of revolutionary labor, the wild 

109 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

insanity of Bolshevism itself, and its reaction in many 
countries like Italy and England, fostered by men of 
evil, with evil manifestations of bloodshed and violence, 
had their influence over the simple minds of the masses 
because of their fair promise of fulfilling the "common 
hopes" of humanity and averting the "common terror." 
Those hopes were and are the abandonment of slaughter 
as a method of argument between one nation and 
another, a closer brotherhood of men under international 
law, the security of the individual and of his family 
from degrading poverty, the abolition of rivalry between 
class and class by greater equality of service and reward, 
the raising of the general standard of life so that all 
men and women shall have a fair share of life's beauty 
and joy. These are the ideals astir in the democracies 
of England, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, the United 
States. They are good ideals. They could be blessed 
by Pope and priests and pastors. They are indeed the 
ideals of society set out in the Gospel of Christ for which 
we have all been struggling through centuries of travail. 
They are now astir, passionately, in the little houses in 
mean streets, in peasants' hovels, in city slums, in revo- 
lutionary committees, in Red armies, in literary debat- 
ing societies, in the private apartments of the Pope of 
Rome. Most of the troubles of Europe to-day are due 
to the desperate efforts of peoples to fulfill those ideals. 
In their human blindness and folly they adopt evil to 
attain the ideal good. English workingmen, like those 
in other countries, think that by striking continually 
they can maintain their wages to the level of a high 
standard of living, whereas they are killing their own 
source of wealth. The communists believe that by 
killing capital they can secure equality, which perhaps 
is true, though it is an equality of ruin. To abolish 
war and create an international society, Trotzky raised 
his Red armies, and Lenin launched his ultimatum 

no 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

against all governments, thereby leading to appalling 
atrocities and to incessant bloodshed. The failure of 
European statesmen to create a new world out of the 
ruins of the old, and the power of reactionary leaders to 
crush the hopes of the idealists looking forward to a 
reconstruction of society with less inequality between 
those who work 'and those who profit, have poisoned 
the brains of many people not otherwise evil. Indig- 
nation against "profiteers," a sense of injustice, an 
impatience with old ways of political argument and 
with old calls to loyalty and obedience from men who 
gained most and suffered least when their calls were 
answered, are seething in the caldron of mass psychol- 
ogy. Yet the "common hopes, " masked by materialism, 
expressed in violence, are in their essence the general 
aspiration of humanity toward a higher phase of social 
life. Here is a great power of idealism, which some new 
leader might call upon for immense service. Cleansed 
from its grossness, lifted above selfishness, spiritualized, 
it might now very quickly reform the world and lead us 
forward to new conquests of civilization. 



VII 

I have said that the ideals of the time are the same in 
the antechambers of the Pope as in the thatched cot of 
the peasant. That sounds like an affected phrase, yet 
not long after the war it was in the Pope's own room, and 
from the Pope himself, that I heard the proof of that. 
Looking back upon that interview I had with him in the 
Vatican, I am astonished at the temerity with which I 
asked for it and the rapidity with which it was granted, 
for it was against all precedents and contrary to the 
austere etiquette and privacy which surround the 
Vatican. It was not merely the desire for a 
newspaper "scoop," the vulgarity of which I loathe, 

in 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

which led me to Rome, with the ardent wish to speak 
with that little man who, as the Holy Father, has the 
loyalty of millions of men and women in all countries 
of Christendom. I was distressed with the agony of 
the world, almost as great in peace as in war, and it 
seemed to me then, as it does now, that a spiritual 
message was needed to give a lead to democracy. I 
remembered how, through the war, many people, not 
Catholics, had looked to the Pope as the one man who 
might rise above the conflict and in thundering words, 
or perhaps in a voice of penetrating sweetness, call the 
world back to sanity and Christian brotherhood. That 
did not happen. Sorrowful messages came from him, 
deploring the "fratricidal strife"; privately he offered 
himself as mediator and peacemaker, but no message 
came to stir the hearts of peoples with burning words, 
irresistible in appeal or command. In England we 
thought him pro-German. In Germany they thought 
him pro-Ally. The world ignored him and his own 
priests were with the world. But even now he might 
say something worth hearing by peoples looking for 
leadership. Through the Daily Chronicle of London 
and the Times of New York I could get the words 
read by millions of plain folk — the nobodies of life 
who were looking for a spiritual lead. That quite 
simply and truly was why I asked to interview the 
Pope. 

My intermediary was a certain Monsignor Ceretti, 
well known in the United States and Australia, where 
he had learned to speak English with a slight American 
accent and breezy unconventionality of manner which 
encouraged audacity. He laughed heartily when I 
told him of my desire. "Impossible!" he said. "They 
don't allow journalists, even at a public audience." 
We spoke of other things. Tactfully I abandoned my 
request until the end of the conversation, when I said, 

112 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

"Of course there is no chance?" He smiled and said, 
"I will let you know." 

Of course there was no chance, and I put the idea out 
of my head until at the Hotel Bristol I received a card 
permitting me to be received in private audience by 
Sa Saintete for twenty minutes, at noon on the following 
day. The impossible had happened! 

It was of course a great honor — President Wilson 
himself had been granted this same time limit — and to 
me a great adventure. I remember now my nervous- 
ness, as I put on evening dress on the morning of the 
interview — according to etiquette — and wrecked a white 
tie so miserably that I had to borrow a waiter's, and 
made a hopeless botch of it. So through the golden 
sunlight of an October day in Rome, in the year 19 19, 
I drove in an old carozza to the Vatican. I felt like a 
man with a great mission. I was going to get a message 
which might help the sick old world a little. As the 
great dome of St. Peter's came into view, with the wide- 
embracing sweep of its colonnades — those mighty 
columns on each side of the cathedral square — I thought 
of the great popes who had raised the magnificence of 
this shrine and whose acts had made Rome the head- 
quarters of Christendom through every age. Some of 
them had been evil men, weak men, but many were 
strong, with a burning passion in them which had 
lighted new fires of faith, active in charity, unyielding 
in their assertion of authority, immensely powerful, 
not only by virtue of their office, but by force of charac- 
ter, splendor of justice, love of humanity, sainthood. 
The world needed such leadership now. 

In the white entrance hall of the Vatican, to the right 
of St. Peter's, I was saluted by the halberdiers in their 
striped tunics and hose, passed up a long flight of marble 
steps, walked through many antechambers in which 
stood groups of papal guards, and in a smaller room 

113 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

was greeted by a chamberlain who knew my business. 
Five minutes passed, which seemed longer than ten. 
A door opened and a monk came out with a smile about 
his lips as though satisfied with words spoken to him. 
The chamberlain beckoned me. At the doorway stood 
Benedict XV. 

He was a simple figure, dressed in white, not so tall 
as I had expected — a tiny man — and with a scholar's 
look, a little austere at first glance. Only at a glance, 
for, after my first salute and when I asked him for 
permission to speak in French, he laughed in a genial 
way, and said, in French also, "In that language we 
shall understand each other. " 

Then he took me by the hand and led me to a chair 
close to his own, so that we sat side by side. 

He asked me about America first, having heard that 
I had been there not long ago, and then asked me to tell 
him about the little studies I have been making of the 
conditions of Europe after the war. 

I spoke to him about the distress of peoples burdened 
by high prices and heavy taxation, and about the curious 
and rather dangerous psychology of many people in 
England, France, Belgium, and Germany — probably in 
Italy also — who are in revolt against present conditions, 
and are disillusioned about that "new world" which 
they expected after the war. 

The Pope listened attentively, and then cut me short, 
as I had hoped. 

"Yes," he said, "the war was a scourge" — he used 
that word "fleau" several times in his conversation — 
"and the efFects of it are enormous and incalculable. 
When it began people imagined that it would be a quick 
war, lasting three, four, five months. Few guessed that 
it would last for nearly five years. That long period of 
strife — that terrific scourge — will have far-reaching 
and enduring results. The people must make up their 

"4 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

minds to endure the consequence of war. They must 
steel themselves to suffer. At the same time we must do 
everything in our power to alleviate those sufferings and 
to ease the burdens of those who can least afford to 
support them." 

I noticed that throughout our conversation the Pope's 
thoughts seemed to be concentrated mostly upon the 
conditions of the working classes. He spoke of the 
people rather than of their rulers, and of the poor rather 
than of the rich. 

When, for instance, I referred again to the strikes and 
other symptoms of social unrest in many countries, 
he said: 

"The people have been irritated by a sense of injus- 
tice. . . . There are many men who have made money 
out of this war. " 

He made a gesture with his forefinger and thumb, as 
though touching money, and said: 

"Those who grew rich out of the war will have to pay. 
The burden of taxation will, no doubt, fall heavily 
upon them." 

He spoke of the great difficulty of the financial situ- 
ation in all countries which have been at war. He 
seemed to think there was no easy or quick solution of 
those economic problems, nor any immediate prospect 
of bringing down high prices to a normal level. 

"It is difficult," he said, "difficult." 

I was interested when he referred to the question of 
the forced loan in Italy. That was a project by 
which a levy was to be made on all capital in Italy, 
starting at 5 per cent on all fortunes above £800 and 
going up to 40 per cent on the largest fortunes. 

The Pope did not express any definite opinion upon 
this measure, but said, "Undoubtedly such taxation as 
that .would lay a heavy burden upon the whole 
nation." 

"5 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

For a few minutes his mind went back to the great 
conflict which had caused all this financial ruin in 
Europe, and he spoke of what the Catholic Church had 
done and tried to do to alleviate its miseries and agonies. 

"We could do very little," he said, "in comparison 
with the enormous suffering caused by the war; but as 
far as possible we took every opportunity of relieving 
the sorrows of people by works of charity. We could 
do no more than that, and it was only small compared 
with all the suffering, but it did bring comfort to many 
poor people — wives and mothers, prisoners and wounded 
— and mitigated some of the severities of military 
acts. 

He mentioned briefly some of the work which had 
been achieved under his direction, and referred me to a 
detailed list of charitable services done during the war 
by the Holy See. 

Among those works which Benedict particularly 
mentioned were the exchange of prisoners of war in- 
capacitated for military service, following his telegram 
dated December 31, 1914, to the sovereigns and heads 
of belligerent states, and the liberation and exchange of 
civilian prisoners. 

These proposals were accepted, and the exchange of 
prisoners through Switzerland proceeded quickly, so 
that between March, 1915, and November, 1916, 2,343 
Germans and 8,868 Frenchmen returned to their own 
countries, while in a single month 20,000 French people 
passed from occupied regions to southern France. 

Then the Pope mentioned to me the work done under 
his direction for endeavoring to discover the where- 
abouts of missing men. Soon after the war began 
letters began to pour into Rome, mostly addressed to 
the "Holy Father" himself, imploring news of missing 
combatants. The Pope read them, took notes, and 
ordered inquiries to be made, and toward the end of 

116 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

1914 he instituted a special bureau, with branches 
afterward at Paderborn, Freiburg, and Vienna. 

"In many cases," said the Pope, "we were able to 
give news to poor anxious families, but of course in 
many other cases there was disappointment." 

Over 100,000 letters were sent to the families of Italian 
soldiers who were captured or missing. 

He also mentioned the work done after his prolonged 
negotiations with the Powers to secure a refuge in 
Switzerland for the sick and wounded, and especially 
for consumptives. 

"We used our influence," he said, "whenever possible, 
to commute the death penalty of people condemned by 
military law in Austria and Germany. In a number of 
cases this was successful." 

It was owing to the Pope's intervention that over a 
hundred French hostages from Roubaix were liberated, 
and among many other people, Princess Marie de Croy 
(the friend of Nurse Cavell), who was condemned to 
ten years' penal servitude for having concealed French 
and Belgian soldiers, owed the mitigation of her punish- 
ment and other concessions to the Pope's intercession. 
It was impossible for him to act in the case of Nurse 
Cavell, owing to the rapidity and secrecy of her exe- 
cution. 

The Pope made only a passing allusion to these serv- 
ices, and said again: "It was very little. We did all 
that was possible, but it only touched the great anguish 
of the war. " 

He told me where I could get detailed accounts of the 
enormous sums of money sent by the Holy See to Bel- 
gium, Poland, Montenegro, and other countries, for 
the purpose of feeding starving populations, and of his 
repeated protests against the brutalities of war by 
whomsoever they might be committed, and of his three 
appeals for peace, the last of which, dated August 1, 

117 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

1917, contained concrete proposals for the beginning 
of negotiations, very similar to President Wilson's 
" Fourteen Points" which came later. 

I tried to induce the Pope to continue upon that line 
of conversation, but he came back suddenly to the con- 
ditions prevailing after the war, and expressed the hope 
that the disillusionment of peoples, the inevitable rise 
in prices owing to taxation, and financial distress, 
would not lead to violence or anarchy. 

"It is the duty of all men," he said, "to endeavor to 
solve these social problems in a lawful and peaceable way 
and so that the burden will be fairly shared with good 
will and charity. " 

Speaking about the relations between capital and 
labor, he referred several times to the writings or 
"Encyclicals" of Leo XIII upon those subjects, which, 
he said, expressed very clearly and in great detail the 
Christian principles regarding the rights of working- 
men and of employers, as well as the duties of the 
state. He hoped those writings by Leo XIII might be 
popularized, as they bore directly upon the problems of 
modern social conditions. 

"All their teaching," he said, "may be summed up 
in two words — Justice and Charity. If men behave 
justly and with real Christian charity toward one 
another, many of the troubles of the world will be re- 
moved. But without justice and charity there will be 
no social progress. " 

After a few more remarks on general subjects, in which 
he showed his desire for the welfare of the people and for 
an alleviation of the sufferings which now prevail in so 
many countries as a direct consequence of the war, 
the Pope rose from his chair and the audience ended, 
after exactly twenty minutes, with his direct permission 
to me to publish the general course of this conversation. 

The words he had spoken were not sensational. To 

118 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

be quite truthful, I was disappointed with them. There 
was nothing in what he had said which would call to 
the hearts of peoples with trumpet notes, no great 
cry of pity and appeal, no passion of spiritual leadership. 
Here was a little, scholarly man, using no high-flown 
phrases, but talking with keen common sense, sincere 
interest in the problems of democracy, sadness at the 
tragedy of the world. Most people would see nothing 
but platitudes in what he told me. Yet, after all, as 
I reflected, when I went out again into the sun-swept 
square of St. Peter's, they were platitudes based upon 
the authority of old and wise tradition, and upon a 
faith in Christ, and such words spoken by a pope or by 
a peasant might fall strangely upon the ears of a world 
deafened by loud and hostile cries, after a war in which 
such a phrase as "Christian charity" was mocked by 
hatred and cruelty. After this interview I wrote a 
sentence which now I read and write again: "Those 
two words, now, at this present day, in this Europe 
which I see so full of suffering, revolt, and passion, hold 
perhaps the truth toward which mankind is groping 
desperately in all manner of ways, with divers philos- 
ophies. They overturned the pagan world when Peter 
came to Rome, and still have power. " 

VIII 

Perhaps Christianity is passing beyond the faith of 
men who have no longer the simplicity of mind to 
believe its mysteries. We must face that question. 
If so, is there any new religion likely to arise and com- 
mand the allegiance of the world with an authority which 
they acknowledge as divine? For if not, it is certain 
that there will be no rally up from the spiritual degra- 
dation into which we have fallen, but still further a 
lowering of moral standards, a grosser materialism. 

119 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

All the experience of human life in history goes to show 
that mankind will not be obedient long to any law of 
self-restraint and self-denial unless it is imposed upon 
their conscience by a supernatural authority which they 
believe divine. Yet without self-denial, human society 
must cease to exist, even human life must end abruptly, 
because men and women will not continue to raise up 
children unless they are impelled by the fear of sin. 
For the pursuit of human happiness ends always in 
disillusion and despair, and without spiritual hope of 
some compensating life beyond the grave this earthly 
span will seem but mockery as always it has seemed in 
the past to thoughtful souls, balancing the debit and 
credit side of life's account. 

There are some who believe that by "Education" 
humanity will reach greater heights of happiness and 
a nobler code of moral law. That is hard to believe, 
for the philosophers of the past and present have not 
claimed great stores of happiness, though they were 
rich in knowledge. Nor has education worked out to 
virtue, as far as we may grasp the standards of the high- 
est culture. Germany was, beyond doubt, the best 
educated nation in Europe, but the most educated among 
them were not most virtuous. They were most wicked. 
In Italy of the Renaissance there were fine scholars, 
great humorists, lovers of beauty, but they put no 
curb on passion, nor did all their talent kill their cruelty. 
The code of virtue is hard to obey. It is the martyr- 
dom of passion. It is pain to the flesh and torture to 
the spirit, except among rare souls who find an easy 
way through life. Nor will any change in the code of 
morality help human nature to be free of this penalty 
of pain. Easy divorce may break a marriage which 
has failed, but will not mend broken hearts. Marriage 
or no marriage, love free as the four winds, the abolition 
of all law and punishment, will not take out of life its 

120 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

hardships and its agonies, and as we know, if the past 
means anything to the present, the lack of law, the 
denial of spiritual duties, ordained by a God believed 
and feared by men, ends in beastiality and blood lust. 
For the heart of man is deceitful above all things and 
desperately wicked. 

It must be the old faith, or a new faith, with divine 
authority, stronger over the minds of men than man- 
made law. That is acknowledged, subconsciously, by 
all people to-day. Those who have abandoned the old 
faith are not satisfied with atheism or agnosticism. 
Secretly they grope about for some other God, or Devil. 
There is an immense amount of this secret groping, this 
reaching out to a spirit world by means of incantations, 
spells, and wizardries. It is a bad sign. It was done 
in Rome before the downfall, in London at its lowest 
phase, between the Middle Ages and Modernity, when 
foul old James was king and Kerr with his witch- 
wife was favorite in Paris before the Revolution. 
No new faith to lead humanity forward seems 
likely to come from spirit-rappings, table-turnings, 
planchettes, and all the incoherent revelations of the 
subconscious mind exhibited in the "spirit-writings" 
of Vale Owen and his kind, which have deluded so many 
simple minds craving for spiritual guidance, for commun- 
ion with their dead, for certainty in future life. 

It has, perhaps, only one redeeming quality, and that 
is the proof that human beings need some high sanction 
for their way of life, and reach out to a spiritual law as 
their one hope of comfort. 

All this stirring and strife of the world means that. 
All this social unrest is but the search for the ideal happi- 
ness. And everywhere, in all classes and all nations, 
there are numbers of men and women filled with a pas- 
sion for service, ready for self-sacrifice, desperately 
eager for spiritual leadership which will give the world 
9 I2 i 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

greater peace, and the peoples of the world a better 
chance of happiness in their souls and in their lives. 
There is an amount of good will in the world to-day 
which would recreate all social life, if but a leader came 
to guide it and unite it with a common impulse. I do 
not think that leader will come, not in the old way, 
singly, in sainthood, with some message of all-embracing 
love. I think rather it will be by the closing up of all 
these separated impulses among the plain folk, by a 
sudden unity of purpose before a common peril threat- 
ening them all, and by the combined leadership of many 
minds, still young and unformed, in our midst, gathering 
up all these ideals and emotions and hopes and giving 
form to them, and order. 

The common peril is the decay of civilization by a 
lowering of the standards of living, due to the breakdown 
of economic machinery which turned the wheels of our 
old life, and the menace of another devastating war 
which would stop them altogether. The peoples are 
conscious of that peril. Instinctively, at least, they 
are aware of it. I believe that suddenly, when it assumes 
a more terrifying aspect, they will gather together in 
a great and common crusade to avert its horrors. All 
the myriad impulses of good will which I find everywhere 
in the world beneath the hard crust of national egotism, 
will flow in a broad, steady river of spiritual purpose, 
and perhaps the old lamps of Christian faith will be 
relit. 

There is, I fancy, a troubled conscience among some of 
the ministers of the Christian churches, a sense of 
guilt and of fear. In the universal tragedy of the war 
they were rebuked by the pettiness of their sectarian 
quarrels, their utter loss of touch with the souls of men, 
condemned to die because their teaching had failed. 
Now, after the war, they are troubled because in that 
time they were impotent, divided into nationalities 

122 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

like the warring nations, and into defenders of the 
state (right or wrong), instead of being united as defend- 
ers of the Faith. Surely, as they knew, religion must 
he more universal than that of Juju men of the war- 
painted tribes. In the Hibbert Journal at which I 
glance from time to time as an adventure in psychology, 
there have been great outpourings of heart, confes- 
sions of failure, pleas for unity, programs for bringing 
the Christian churches into closer touch with the people. 
They seem to believe they have their chance now, once 
more, to restore the old faith to the people, and their 
last chance. I believe that the Protestant churches 
will make a desperate bid for that by identifying them- 
selves with the economic interests of democracy and 
supporting them in all demands that are clear in justice. 
This new attempt was seen very clearly in the great 
British coal strike in the spring of this year, when a group 
of bishops of the Anglican Church supported the case of 
the miners and affirmed in the spirit of Pope Leo XIII 
that the first charge on industry should be the wages 
of labor sufficient for the decent livelihood of the 
workers. That was a sign of a new spirit in the Church 
of England which did not excite more than a passing 
comment, yet it was remarkable from a body of men who 
by their tradition of caste and training, since the alli- 
ance between state and Church, have been aristocratic 
in their intellectual outlook, stubborn opponents of 
democratic progress, and, with a few notable exceptions, 
stanch defenders of the power and privilege of wealth, 
however unjust in its oppression. Even now the clergy 
of England as a body, apart from many zealous mis- 
sionaries among the poor of the cities, stand for the old 
order and not for the new, for the squirearchy and not 
for the peasantry, for aristocracy of rank and money 
against the rising claims of the great crowd. They do 
so without corrupt intentions or conscious snobbery, 

123 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

being for the most part men of amiable character 
and devoted service, abominably poor themselves in 
the small parishes, but it is their intellectual heritage. 

There is one among them who is an intellectual 
champion of the old order, a very dangerous enemy of 
democracy whose very name he loathes as a foul, ill- 
flavored word. This is Dean Inge, one of the most 
remarkable figures in English life to-day — "the gloomy 
Dean," as he is called in the popular press. A mel- 
ancholy man, profoundly interested in all the facts of 
life, able to relate them to the experience of history 
throughout the ages, he has an angry, irritable contempt 
for the shabby ignorance, the loose thinking, the lyings, 
shams, and insincerities of politicians and pressmen. 
With a gloomy vision, justified, alas, in its gloom, he re- 
gards the moral slackness of the masses and the economic 
misery of Europe without sentiment, and in a hard, 
realistic spirit. He is contemptuous of the little ex- 
pedients of humanists and intellectuals to cure the evils 
of our state. He sees strong tides and currents of social 
evolution sweeping all such efforts like straws before 
them. He watches the checks and balances of nature, 
controlling the destiny of men. He sees man himself as 
a puppet of blind forces buffeted about, broken, without 
power over his own direction. Disease, famine, wars, 
the ebb and flow of trade, the struggle of races, the rise 
and fall of empires, the progress and retrogression of 
human society, are the themes with which he deals with 
a sense of mastery and with a kind of savage joy in 
revealing the impotence and absurdity of human en- 
deavor. His arguments have brought him to the con- 
clusion that the white races will go down before the 
dark races unless they revert to dirt-cheap labor, 
abandon all social progress for the masses, and raise 
greater armies than before to maintain their heritage — 
even then being bound to lose in course of time 

124 



THE NEED OF THE SPIRIT 

when the dark races will also arm and advance to 
destroy. 

Testimonies [he wrote] which might easily be multiplied, 
and which are not contradicted, are sufficient to prove that under a 
regime of peace, free trade, and unrestricted migration the colored 
races would outwork, underlive, and eventually exterminate the 
whites. The importance of this fact cannot be exaggerated. The 
result of the European, American, and Australian labor movement 
has been to produce a type of workingman who has no survival 
value, and who but for protection in its extremest form, the prohi- 
bition of immigration, would soon be swept out of existence. And 
this protection rests entirely on armed force; in the last resort, on 
war. It is useless to turn away from the facts, however unwelcome 
they may be to our socialists and pacifists. The abolition of war 
and the establishment of a league to secure justice and equality of 
treatment for all nations, would seal the doom of the white laborer, 
such as he has made himself. There was a time when we went to 
war to compel the Chinese to trade with us, and when we ruined a 
flourishing Indian trade by the competition of Lancaster cotton. 
That was the period which it is the fashion to decry as a period of 
ruthless greed and exploitation. The workingman has brought 
that period to an end. To-day he is dreaming of fresh rewards, 
doles, and privileges which are to make the white countries a para- 
dise for his class. And all the time he is living on sufference, behind 
an artificial dike of ironclads and bayonets, on the other side of 
which is a mass of far more efficient labor, which would swallow 
him up in a generation if the barriers were removed. 

In his philosophical writings Dean Inge strives to be 
unbiased, scientific in his search for truth, but through- 
out them all he reveals himself as the protagonist of 
aristocracy and the enemy of the mob, a believer in 
slave labor, well disciplined, kept tame, subservient 
to authority by force and moral obedience. He belongs 
to the school of thought which in the early nineteenth 
century defended the use of child labor in factories 
for fourteen hours a day, fought step by step against 
all the Factory Acts which gave the workers a chance 
of decency and health, and opposed the trade union 
which helped to gain those victories as the work of the 

1 25 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

devil. The clergy of the Church of England, especially 
those in comfortable livings, belonged to that school of 
thought, and betrayed the Gospel of Christ by their 
toadyism to the crudest company of industrial slave 
drivers that have ever escaped hanging by outraged 
humanity. It was their callousness to the sufferings of 
the people that divorced the Church of England from 
the masses. If Dean Inge prevails over his brethren, 
the Church of England will disappear under a wave of 
wrath. But he is a lonely man these days. 

Everywhere, in all classes and in all nations, the 
spirit of the people is rising, claiming new rewards, a 
bigger share of life's good gifts, and seeking some way 
of escape from the eternal menace of war, the crushing 
burdens of armaments, the idiocy of international strife. 
Everywhere the spirit of good will is gathering strength 
to fight the spirit of ill will, to obtain union over disunion, 
and construction instead of destruction. Even Dean 
Inge ought to see that if the peril of the dark races is 
real, the only answer is the unity of the white races, 
rather than endless rivalry with bouts of massacre. 
The people begin to see that. They demand leadership 
to that end. They will produce their own leaders. It 
is the hope of Europe. 



IV 

THE NEW GERMANY 



DURING the war the German people were put out- 
side the pale of civilization by the Allied propagan- 
dists and by public opinion, fever-heated not only by 
those engineers of passion (enormously efficient), but by 
their own nightmares of imagination and 'ferocity. The 
French called them "Boches" and "Barbares," the 
British called them "Huns," and the readers of the 
Daily Mail and other popular journals believed 
firmly, and here and there continue to believe, that 
"German" means the same thing as "Devil," and that 
German human nature is in none of its characteris- 
tics similar to the nature of the rest of the human 
family, but a thing apart — obscene, monstrously cruel, 
abominable. 

Most of these characteristics were recorded, in mil- 
lions of words, within the first six weeks of war, and 
became fixed for all the war, and for years to come, in 
millions of minds. The invasion of Belgium was the 
first shock under which the imagination of people who 
knew nothing of modern warfare (none of us knew) 
reeled and saw red. Then followed atrocity stories — 
the cutting off of babies' hands and women's breasts, 
the shooting of civilians, the burnings in Alost and 
Louvain, abominable outrages on women and children. 
These things, told day after day by correspondents, 
repeated with whispered words of horror in every house 

127 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

in France and England, reiterated and confirmed (it 
seemed) by the Bryce Report — created a hatred of the 
German race too deep for words, in masses of simple 
hearts. Those people were surely devilish! Not Attila 
and his Huns had done worse things in the dawn of his- 
tory. They were human gorillas, monsters. The re- 
moval of the women of Lille and other towns for en- 
forced labor away from their own folks aroused the 
fury to flaming heights again. The use of poison gas, 
their treatment of prisoners, and, later, the sinking of 
merchant ships and the Lusitania and Red Cross ships 
in an unrestricted U-boat warfare, gave fresh food to 
those greedy for the continuity of Hate. The Germans 
from first to last were "Huns" of inhuman wickedness. 
So many wrote, and so most of those who read believed. 
I was not one of those who wrote or believed as much 
as that. Never once throughout the whole war did I 
call the Germans "Huns," never once, from first to 
last, did I in my thoughts or in my words credit those 
who put them outside the human family. I believed 
always, with what seems to me now a strange obstinacy, 
though I have not altered my belief, that the Germans 
as a people were neither better nor worse than others in 
Europe, though under the discipline of powers a little 
more evil and cruel, and ruthless in cruelty, than other 
powers dominating the actions of common men. I have 
called this conviction of mine a "strange obstinacy" 
because, looking back on it, I marvel that I withstood 
the tremendous pressure of public opinion and of Ger- 
man guilt. I had no blood ties or other bonds with the 
German folk. Before the war I had only spent a few 
weeks in their country. My affection was whole- 
heartedly for the French, and during the war this devel- 
oped into a deep enthusiasm. I was not a pacifist in 
the sense of a man afraid to fight, or a "conscientious 
objector" against fighting, for as a correspondent all 

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THE NEW GERMANY 

my soul was with the fighting men, and I risked my life 
with them. Nor could any soul alive have been more 
sickened by those tales of horror, and by cruelty unde- 
nied and undeniable. I was there to see the manner 
of German destruction, day by day, year by year, in 
ruined cities and ravaged fields, and all their killing of 
young manhood. Yet never did I believe in their mon- 
strosity, or their place apart in the human family, as 
ogre changelings. I think what was always at the back 
of my mind was the belief that the German people, as 
a wfiole, the peasants and the clerks and the manufac- 
turing fellows, were but victims of a damnable discipline 
and of a still more damnable philosophy, imposed upon 
them by military minds of a rigid and almost religious 
caste; and that those Prussian Junkers were only rather 
more logical, and very much more efficient, in the 
fulfillment of their ideas than certain English militarists 
whom I had happened to meet along the way of life — 
an opinion in which I have since been confirmed by 
certain generals in Ireland and others like them in cere- 
bral structure of anthropoid type. 

Again and again I met German prisoners, captured 
freshly on the field of battle, talked with them, watched 
them, and read their letters, which I used to grab from 
dugouts. They were human fellows, all right. They 
hated the war and called it the "Great Swindle" years 
before it ended, and cursed their officers. They were 
afraid, like our men, under barrage fire. They were 
mostly very civil, and glad of a civil word to them. 
They loved their wives and children, like most human 
animals (a little more than most, perhaps), though 
doubtless they were unfaithful behind the lines in France, 
being men in exile, and eager for what life could give 
them before death came. In physique masses of them 
were extraordinarily like English fellows of country 
regiments. There was not a bean to choose between 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

them. Doubtless some of them got beastly drunk 
when there was a chance, like some of ours, and men who 
are beastly drunk do beastly things. 

Yes, but atrocities? . . . 

Well, they had shot down civilians in cold blood, or 
in hot blood, and called them, justly or unjustly, francs- 
tireurs. Shots had come from Belgian windows, so 
they said. They had burned Belgian homes and put 
Belgian men and boys against a wall and killed them. 
Horrible!— but defended in my hearing by British 
officers, who said: "We should do the same. It's the 
law of war. " Doubtless there had been many atroci- 
ties, but I could never get evidence of any of them. 
All the evidence I could get myself, throughout the war, 
in the places where they were alleged to happen, was 
against the truth of them. No living babies had their 
hands cut off, nor women their breasts. That is cer- 
tain, in spite of faked photographs. No Canadians 
were crucified, though it will be believed in Canada for 
all time. The evidence was analyzed and rejected by 
our G. H. Q. There were no German "corpse factories," 
though our Chief of Intelligence patronized the myth. 
I myself inquired for atrocities in Lille, Liege, and 
captured villages in which we rescued civilians who had 
lived for years in Germans hands. I could not get any 
evidence at all. The civilians themselves, while cursing 
the Germans as a "sale race," did not charge them with 
abominable acts resembling in any way the atrocity 
stories of the newspapers. I am convinced that much 
of the evidence in the Bryce Report is utterly untrust- 
worthy. Nevertheless, there were, no doubt, atrocities, 
horrible and disgusting cruelties, on evidence that can- 
not be lightly disregarded, and according to the nature 
of men — peasants, drunken fellows, degenerate brutes, 
living in an enemy country in time of war. We have 
seen in Ireland the cruelty of human passion on both 

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THE NEW GERMANY 

sides. There were bad things done by German soldiers, 
and there were worse things done by the orders of the 
German High Command. That business of the women 
in Lille was unpardonable. The sinking of hospital 
ships was a degradation of humanity itself. The 
smashing of French machinery in cotton mills and silk 
industries revealed an evil genius corresponding to the 
destruction of Irish creameries condoned by Hamar 
Greenwood and providing amusement to Lloyd George. 
The use of poison gas aroused an outcry from civilized 
peoples — among the Allies. Our own intensive use of 
it rather dulled the sensibilities of public opinion, and 
our recent experiments in a more deadly form of gas 
(highly successful) show that our military minds intend 
to use it in the next war, should military minds still 
be allowed to have their way. Yet the charge sheet 
remains heavy against the Germans in the war, nor were 
the people themselves guiltless in supporting acts 
then which now, in defeat, they condemn. Not guilt- 
less, callous of much cruelty, so that they might get 
victory. Well, we find more cruelty in human nature, 
outside Germany, then once we cared to believe. In 
Russia it is not unknown, though Russians were so good 
and kind when they were still fighting on our side. 
Even in England, and in Ireland, there are potentiali- 
ties of cruelty which are not quite reassuring to our 
self-complacency, though, on the whole, we are a kindly 
and good-natured folk, unless we have swerved from 
the straight line of tradition. The more I see of differ- 
ent peoples, up and down the world, the more I under- 
stand that they cannot be held guilty for the acts of 
their rulers, for the policy of their diplomats, for the 
cruelty of their fellows, or for their own ignorance and 
stupidity. There is no "England" when foreign folk 
say "England" does this or does that, thinks this or 
that. There are millions of English people who do and 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

think quite differently, or have no share in what is done 
or thought in particular cases. There is no "France" 
when we say "France" is hostile to England, "France" 
wants to establish a military autocracy in Europe. 
There are many French people who love England still, 
many who are antimilitary. So the German house- 
wife, watching her children develop bulbous heads with 
rickets (what they call "the English disease") because 
of our blockade, had very little to do, as far as I can see, 
with the gas attack at Ypres, and the peasant hustled 
from his plow to front-line trenches was not respon- 
sible directly for Von Tirpitz and the U-boat war. " But 
they supported their government," says the logical 
man. "They did not rise and overthrow their devilish 
leaders." That is true. But English folk decline to 
be branded because their government has done things 
which they detest, villanious things, without honor, 
dirty things which cannot bear the light of day. The 
clerks, the shop girls, the farmers* boys, the mechanics, 
have not overthrown a government which is the most 
sinister combination of corrupt interests ever known in 
English history. They have neither the power, nor 
the knowledge, to control or check or defy their gov- 
ernment. Most of them are too busy with their little 
needs of life to bother about it. 



II 

The claim of the Germans to an ordinary share of- 
human characteristics was admitted by most of our 
fighting men throughout the war, who called the man 
on the opposite side of the way "Fritz" or "Jerry," 
with a certain sympathy, as being in the same bloody 
mess, and with real admiration as a first-class fighting 
man. The claim was also admitted, instantly and 
astoundingly, by the British troops who occupied the 

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THE NEW GERMANY 

Rhine bridgeheads after the armistice. The Germans 
showed no kind of hostility against our men. On the 
contrary, there was something rather humiliating at 
first in their show of friendliness. They went too far, 
it seemed to some of us, in playing English patriotic 
airs in their public restaurants, so soon after their 
defeat. Fear, perhaps, as well as a desire to be gemiith- 
lig, was the secret motive of their friendliness. If 
British soldiers had been ugly tempered, they could have 
made a hell along the Rhine. Better to keep them good 
tempered! 

All motives apart, there was quickly on the Rhine a 
"cordial understanding" between our men and German 
families in whose houses they were billeted. Whether 
we like to admit it or not, there is something German 
in our own blood, in our way of life, in our manner of 
speech. The houses were spotlessly clean, and our 
Tommies liked this cleanliness. When taps were 
turned on, water came out, and our men, after expe- 
rience in French billets, where sanitary engineering is 
not a strong science, said, "Bloody wonderful!" After- 
ward some of them, under the tuition of some Deutsche s- 
Mddcheriy said, " Merkwiirdig!" There German girls 
were neat and clean and fair and plump, like buxom 
country wenches at home. They were good inter- 
preters of German life to British lads. 

Our officers yielded more tardily, with certain prick- 
ings of conscience, and with a stirring of old memories 
and oaths of hatred, to German civility, until most of 
those, too, were captured with admiration for the good 
order of German social life, for their astonishing indus- 
try and efficiency, for the solid comfort of their homes, 
and for their habitual sense of discipline. There were 
certain types of German manhood who remained re- 
pulsive to English eyes and ideas — the bald-headed 
vulture type — but so quickly, so utterly, did all sense 

1.33 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

of Hate disappear, th t, sitting in some of those 
restaurants in Cologne while the gospel of hate was still 
in full blast at home, I used to think that English 
maiden ladies and patriotic old gentlemen in St. James's 
Street clubs, and newspaper leader writers, would have 
been stricken dumb if suddenly confronted with these 
scenes where English soldiers chinked beer mugs with 
German soldiers, sat in joyous company with German 
girls, and listened to German bands playing "The 
Roast Beef of Old England" and "Britannia Rules 
the Waves." It was just a recognition that these 
people, anyhow, were human souls, not individually 
guilty of atrocities, not "Huns" in their manners and 
ideas, not particularly responsible for the war, and 
jolly glad, like our people, that it was all over at last. 
To me it seemed a great moral lesson in humanity. 
I saw it as a hope that, after all, human nature might be 
stronger than international hatreds — though I was 
wrong, at the time, for international hatred reasserted 
itself, mostly on our side, and the friendliness of men 
in contact with one another could not overcome the hos- 
tilities and greeds and plunder spirit of politicians and 
peoples not in human contact with defeated nations. 
Justice, also, had to be considered, and as Madame 
Roland apostrophized liberty from the scaffold, so might 
we cry out, "Comme on t'a jou'ee en ton nom!" (What 
games they have played in thy name!"). 

Ill 

The German people acknowledged defeat. It is a 
mere newspaper myth which pretends still that they 
never realized or admitted defeat. The terms of sur- 
render on Armistice Day were the great acknowledg- 
ment — an annihilating blow to all their military pride. 
The signing of the Peace of Versailles was the knell of 

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doom to any last vestige of incredulity. The German 
Empire had surrendered its armies, its fleet, its mer- 
cantile marine, its property in many countries, and was 
pledged for years, and generations, to pay such great 
sums of money in indemnities to the victor nations 
that no imagination could grasp their significance 
beyond the certain fact that German industry would 
be taxed to the utmost limit under the pressure of irre- 
sistible force. Every soldier who tore off his shoulder 
straps and went back home told the tale of the last 
months of war, when there were no reliefs, no reinforce- 
ments, no chance of holding the front against the enemy 
attacks, so that they were rounded up like sheep after 
ghastly slaughter. It is true that men like Ludendorff 
and other generals tried to fling the blame of defeat on 
the civilian populations, wrote about "the stab in the 
back," blamed the revolution for the breakdown of 
the armies. That cowardly camouflage has not de- 
ceived the German people, though newspaper corre- 
spondents accept it on its face value. 

"You have gambled. You have lost. You must 
pay!" said a Socialist Deputy in the Reichstag when I 
was in Berlin this summer, and he turned to the mem- 
bers of the Right — representatives of the Junkers — who 
tried to mock at him, but then were silent under that 
lash of truth. 

They knew they were defeated, the German people, 
in their bodies and in their souls. 

In their bodies they knew long before the ending of 
the war. We do not yet realize — those, at least, who 
were not in Germany at once after the armistice — how 
sharp was the tooth of hunger which bit them and how 
long it gnawed at them. Even rich people who could 
pay any money for smuggled food, the practice of 
schleichhandlung, as they call it, over and above the 
allowance of their ration cards, found it hard to get 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

enough to satisfy their appetites. Even they were 
always a little hungry, just to the point of thinking 
continually of food, remembering their last good meals, 
anticipating the next, so that, as I am told by them, it 
became an obsession. The middle classes, not rich 
enough for much in the way of schleichhandlung 
(which is smuggling), and kept to the strict severity 
of official rationing, never, for two years, had enough to 
eat, or at least never enough nutritious food. They 
indulged in chemical products, ersatz food, which 
gave them a false sense of satisfaction for a time, but 
no red corpuscles. They saw their children withering, 
weakening. In the poorer classes there was real star- 
vation, and the women and children were victims of 
tuberculosis and every kind of illness due to lack of 
milk and fats. Women fainted at their work. A 
strange drowsiness crept over them, so that working 
girls would drop asleep in tramcars, as I saw them after 
the armistice, through sheer anaemic weakness. For the 
children of the cities the last two years of war and the 
first years of peace were doom years. They, like the 
babes of Vienna, were so rickety that they did not grow 
bones in their bodies, but only gristle. 

It was at the beginning of 1916 that the pinch began. 
By October of 19 16, when the milk ordinances were in 
force, most cities had lost their last chance of fat suffi- 
ciency. German scientists, confirmed by British, have 
worked out the statistics of "calories" required for a 
workingman of middle weight as 3,300 a day. 

In the summer of 1916 the German folk were reduced 
to 1,985 per capitum. In the winter 1916-17 they were 
reduced to 1,344, ana " m tne summer of 1917 to 1,100. 
The majority of the German folk were obliged to exist 
on a third of the means of life necessary for normal 
nourishment. The effect on childbirth and child life 
was devastating. The birth rate went down during 

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the war by 40 per cent, and the death rate of children 
reached sinister figures. 

In Prussia 50,391 children between one and fifteen 
years of age died in 1918, compared with 27,730 in the 
year before the war. In Mecklenburg-Schwerin, an 
agricultural state, 819 children died in 1918, compared 
with 360 in 1914. Tuberculosis ravaged children of 
all ages, as well as adults, mostly women, and in 191 5 
there were 61,000 deaths; in 1916, 66,544; m I 9 I 7> 87,032; 
and in 191 8 over 97,000 — from that disease, directly due 
to undernourishment. 

Almost worse than the deaths was the weakness of 
the living, thousands of children crippled for life by hip 
and joint diseases, and so weakened for life by the hard- 
ships of their early days that in 1919 a careful analysis 
of school children proved that 60 per cent of them were 
from one and a half to two years underdeveloped, accord- 
ing to the normal standards of their ages. Even in this 
year 192 1 the percentage of children underdeveloped to 
that extent in the industrial cities remains very high. 

So the German people suffered, and the worst thing 
that women suffered, and many men, was to see their 
children weakening and dying, or never gaining in health 
and strength. No wonder, poor souls, that they wished 
well to a U-boat war which should break the blockade 
and let food in, did not cry out against the cruelty even 
of a Lusitania sinking in which the bodies of babes were 
delivered to the sea, because of millions of German 
children doomed to death if the blockade lasted with 
its deadly grip upon German life. To break that net 
anyhow, by any violence, by any cruelty, was justified 
in the souls of German men and women besieged through 
the years of war and watching the blight upon the 
children they had brought into an evil world. So, if I 
had been a German father, I should have thought, and 
so would you, I guess, who read this book. 
10 137 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

When the armistice was made, the German folk 
looked for relief. "At last," they said, "the blockade 
will be broken and our children saved!" But month 
after month, as the peace treaty was being drafted 
and discussed by four or five leisurely and self-interested 
men, pleased with their high mission to alter the struc- 
ture of European geography and to build a new world, 
the blockade was kept tight, and month after month 
more German babies died, more withered, more sickened 
with horrible disease. "The justice of God!" said 
certain pious souls in England. If that is God's jus- 
tice, it is not pitiful. But it is man's cruelty, and we 
cannot shelter ourselves behind the back of God. The 
German folk were bitter against us for that. I think 
they had a right to be bitter, and that the verdict of 
history will be against us for that. We had beaten 
them into absolute surrender. Our force was enough to 
impose our terms without the need of baby-starving. 
Nor is it a defense to say that the Germans would have 
been harsher with us if they had won. Gentlemen 
do not regulate their conduct by the standard of those 
whom they condemn as brutes, or should not do so, I 
imagine. We had such power over our beaten enemy 
that we could have forgone the privilege of cruelty in 
that and other things. 

There was one thing we did which was the worst form 
of cruelty — cruelty to animals. That was our holding 
back the prisoners of war a year and more after the 
armistice. Even as I write there are still some German 
prisoners in France, serving terms of punishment. 
Frightful! It was justified according to the law, utterly 
unjustified in human psychology. Imagine those poor 
wretches, just like animals, caged, fed, powerless to 
resist or protest. The war was over and they had re- 
joiced at its ending. The war had finished for fighting 
men, and through their barbed-wire cages they saw ours 

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marching for home again, cheering, joyous. Month 
after month they stayed on, sick with Heimzveh, suf- 
fering torture of soul for their own women and babes. In 
Germany this was torture, too. I saw postcards written 
to the caged men by their women and children. "Why 
don't you come home, dear father? The war is over. 
Why do the English still keep you prisoners?" They 
were kept as hostages of German surrender until some 
went mad and tried to kill themselves. 

Then at last, in the autumn of 19 19, I saw them going 
back, trainloads of them, passing over a railway bridge 
in Cologne. Each train was decked with branches of 
green stufF; from every window the liberated prisoners 
leaned out, waving red flags and red rags. I wondered 
at the reason of that red color. Were they all revolu- 
tionarists, going to make trouble because of their bitter- 
ness ? The people of Cologne rushed out to the bridge 
to cheer them. But many people I saw could not cheer. 
They burst into tears, and stood there weeping. Those 
were truckloads of human tragedy, a year late for 
peace. It would have been a larger thing if we had let 
them go before. It would have done good, and no harm, 
as a generous act. We had small men, with small 
brains and small hearts, at the top of things. 

IV 

The history of Germany after the armistice and just 
before was a strange study in human psychology. Their 
"revolution" was the mildest thing of its kind ever 
known in the turmoil of a nations ruin. It began with 
a mutiny in the fleet when the seamen marched from 
Kiel with the red flag, gathering adherents of soldiers, 
self-demobilized, ruffians liberated from prison, and 
young boys eager for exciting adventures in the way of 
shoplifting and looting. Through many towns marched 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

this horde of men and boys, and in many places they 
suspended the Bur germeister, disarmed the police, and 
took over the control of the civic administration as far 
as occupying the city halls and posting revolutionary 
placards on walls and lamp-posts where we read them 
when we made our move toward the Rhine. Some 
clothing stores were looted, a good many officers were 
manhandled, having their shoulder straps and badges 
of rank torn from their uniforms, if they did not them- 
selves remove those symbols of authority, which most 
did, in a fearful way. But all that was not very terri- 
ble, and there were no scenes of bloodshed or passion- 
ate cruelty. Simultaneously there were moving back 
through Germany the remnants of broken armies, 
keeping good order, marching with the same old disci- 
pline, except when, at each town, men left the ranks, 
cut off their badges and buttons, and returned to civil 
life. The home-coming men were received as heroes 
by their folk. They were heroes, for they had fought 
in many great battles, won many great victories, and 
had been defeated, not by lack of courage — their rear- 
guard resistance had been stubborn to the end — but 
by their own dwindling numbers under the immense and 
overwhelming pressure of the Allied armies. They 
were garlanded with flowers as though they had won 
the war; and we need not sneer at that, but rather 
admire the spirit of that welcome home to broken 
men. 

The red-flag columns, looting and shouting and 
playing at revolution, were not very terrible, as I have 
said, but they terrified the German civilians, who shrank 
back from the specter of anarchy suggested by these 
demonstrations. Far greater was their dread of Bolshe- 
vism than of Allied troops about to occupy the Rhine 
towns. It is indeed a fact that they looked for our 
army with anxious expectation, as guardians of law and 

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order. From Cologne, in which the revolutionary 
seamen had played their usual farce, came an urgent 
request that our troops should occupy the city before 
schedule time, and when our first patrols of cavalry, 
which I accompanied, entered the Dom-Platz, they 
were received not as enemies, but as friends. Strange 
paradox, but easily understood by those who knew the 
German dread of anarchy, their instinctive and in- 
herited traditions of civic discipline, and their immense 
relief that the drain of German blood had stopped at 
last. 

The flight of the Kaiser and the proclamation of the 
Republic comprised the German revolution over the 
whole territory of the old Empire, except in Berlin, 
where there was some short and desperate street fight- 
ing, not between supporters of the old regime and the 
new Republicans, but between the new Republicans and 
the communists, or Spartacists as they called them- 
selves, with Bolshevik ideals, under the leadership of 
Karl Liebknecht. A Provisional Government had been 
formed by Liberal and Moderate Socialists, of whom 
the chiefs were Ebert, Scheidemann, and Erzberger, 
with Doctor Solf as Foreign Minister. In the background 
were the Junkers and the old imperial bureaucracy, 
lying low, watching events with an anxiety that was 
gradually allayed when they realized that the German 
people were not out for anarchy, nor for vengeance 
against their old leaders, but in a vast majority were 
hostile to the small bodies of Spartacists. It was also 
made clear by Scheidemann and his colleagues (men 
who had been loyal throughout the war and stanch 
supporters of every act of military autocracy, in spite 
of a thin camouflage of democratic protest) that they 
were determined to establish the Republic on the old 
traditions of imperialism without the Emperor, or at 
least as protectors of capital and buorgeois interests. 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

The military leaders [says an eyewitness of the revolution (my 
friend Percy Brown, in his valuable book, Germany in Dissolution)] 
were at a loss. They had expected the long-suffering masses to 
turn savagely on their late masters. Hundreds of high officers had 
fled the country to find that peace and defeat had found Germany 
merely bewildered, without a sign of revengeful temper. They 
found the sailors, the only people who really revolted, offering to 
protect the property of the wealthy until order was restored! If 
the General Staff had had any sort of a plan by which they could 
have saved their faces, they could have suppressed the revolutionary 
movement as easily and as completely as they have kept the people 
down since Bismarck showed them the way. 

Karl Liebknecht and his revolutionary companion, 
Rosa Luxemburg, as the leaders of the Spartacist 
groups, the only people who believed in a real revolution 
of the laboring masses against the forces of capital 
and of bourgeoisie, in the true style of Lenin, were 
feared "worse than the plague," says the writer I have 
already quoted. They organized revolutionary out- 
breaks and took forcible possession of the Vorwdrts 
and other newspaper offices. They were given short 
shrift by the Green Guards, or military police, of Berlin, 
under the command of Noske, who had the brain and 
temper of a Prussian general. With field artillery and 
machine guns, flame throwers and bombs, the govern- 
ment forces surrounded the Spartacist strongholds and 
shot their defenders to pieces. Karl Liebknecht and 
Rosa Luxemburg, who had believed in the quick success 
of the insurrection against the Provisional Government 
in Berlin, had been trying to rally up the provinces. 
They remained in hiding after the collapse of their 
comrades in Berlin, until captured by a trick of Noske's 
officers. On their way to prison they were brutally 
murdered. The "revolution" was at an end, except 
for sporadic outbursts of a feeble kind here and there. 
It was no revolution at all, in the old sense of the word. 
No wild wave of fury swept over the German people 

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because of the ruin and defeat into which they had been 
led by their rulers. There was no bloody vengeance 
against the military and aristocratic caste which had 
used the bodies of humble men as gun fodder for their 
imperial ambitions, and poisoned their very souls by 
a damnable philosophy of militarism, and for years had 
disciplined them brutally into servitude. No red 
flames made bonfires of the country houses into which the 
Junkers had slunk sulkily. LudendorfF and Von Tirpitz 
did not dangle from the crossbars of German lamp- 
posts, nor any other men whose arrogant conceit had 
brought their country into the deep gulfs of ruin, playing 
like gamblers with the fate of an empire, and then, 
when they lost, blaming the people who were victims 
of this insanity. The Allied peoples would have been 
more satisfied with the sincerity of a "change of heart" 
among the German folk if some of their chief thugs had 
been slit from ear to ear, if there had been something 
in the Russian style, which they deplored in Russia but 
desired in Germany. Not a bloodthirsty man myself, I 
am tempted by the thought that it would have been 
well if the high military caste and the Junkers of the 
old regime had been swept out of the country by their 
own folk under a sentence of lifelong banishment. It 
would have helped the world forward, and German 
democracy could have claimed greater generosity from 
the peoples of other nations. 

The German people whom I met after the armistice 
were stupefied by the immense surrender of all their 
old pride, and bewildered by the uncertain future ahead 
of them. I could find no hate in them for the English, 
and no hate for the authors of their own tragedy. For the 
Kaiser they had no passionate enthusiasm, but a little 
pity, a little contempt, and a latent sentiment which 
they could not annul. They did not, and do not, believe 
that he "willed the war." They regarded him as a 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

figurehead used by the German High Command, and 
a lover of peace. Out of the depths of their ruin they 
remembered him in the old days of German splendor 
and success, a fine personality, the head of the house 
of Hohenzollern, which was identified with the glory of 
Prussia and the Empire. They would not fight to get 
him back, they did not yearn to have him back, but 
they had no grudge against him. So also it was with 
Hindenburg, who, unlike LudendorfF — unpopular every- 
where — remained with the armies to the end and asso- 
ciated himself with the German people in defeat as well 
as in victory. His soldiers remembered the magic of 
his name when he had directed them to victory. Other 
generals also, the commanders in the field, received 
that tribute of remembrance which softened the charge 
against them of reckless leadership to ruin. The 
"revolution," therefore, was not one of popular fury 
or vengeance. The very magnitude of their disaster 
united the German people for self-preservation after 
the war, and they saw clearly that disunion, anarchy, 
would lead them into deeper and blacker pits of ruin. 
That fear of anarchy to an order-loving people, long 
trained in the philosophy of bourgoise life, protection 
of property, industry, commerce, was the dominant 
thought of the masses of German folk, overwhelming 
all other instincts. . . . And always Russia was a 
ghastly warning. 

So they supported Ebert, Scheidemann, and the 
moderate program of the Majority Socialists, with 
their allegiance to bureaucratic traditions and govern- 
mental authority. Later they swung more and more 
to the Right rather than to the Left, to the Deutsches 
Volkspartei with its imperial convictions, and to even 
more reactionary groups. That was when the Treaty 
of Versailles was revealed in the full measure of its 
severity and ruthlessness, and when French and 

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British opinion, especially the opinion of French and 
British newspapers, convinced the German people 
that they were still regarded as outside the pale of 
civilization, could hope for no generosity, for no mercy, 
for no fair play, even, from the Allied Powers and their 
Supreme Council. Under the goad of constant in- 
sults — still called "Huns" and "Boches," liars and 
monsters — and under the menace of military "sanc- 
tions, " and in the grip still of that blockade by starva- 
tion, the German spirit which had been ready for demo- 
cratic union with other peoples in the League of Nations 
and for liberation from its old traditions, reacted and 
hardened and was filled with bitterness. 

Their revolution had been real to a degree which 
we do not even yet admit. It had replaced the Emperor 
by Ebert the tailor, and all the other kings of Germany 
had fled. More than that, it did represent a great 
change in the moral and spiritual outlook of the German 
people. Gone were the arrogant officers swaggering 
along the sidewalks and thrusting civilians to the gutter. 
Gone was all the military pomp and pride which had 
assumed so great a place in their national life. The 
immensity of their losses in men and wealth, the stag- 
gering figures of their national debts, the inevitability 
and enormity of the price they would have to pay, 
shocked the soul of Germany to its innermost recesses, 
uprooted the very foundations of their old faith, and 
gave them an entirely new vision regarding their past 
history and their future place. I am convinced from 
all I heard in Germany after the armistice — though at 
that time my observation was limited to the occupied 
zone — that the German people would have responded 
eagerly and thankfully to any touch of chivalry and to 
any conviction of real justice. They did not want to 
avoid punishment, but they hoped, these men and 
women who were victims of war, that it would not be 

H5 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

greater than human nature itself could bear without 
revolt, nor so cruel and vindictive as to reduce them to 
despair. President Wilson had made great promises to 
democracy in his Fourteen Points, and he had included 
the German people in his pledges if they got rid of their 
old rulers and established a democratic government. 
Well, the German people had proclaimed their Repub- 
lic, and Ebert the tailor was their President, and it 
was stable and lasting and free from anarchy. They had 
fulfilled their part and shared the hopes of the peoples 
in open covenants openly arrived at, and the self- 
determination of nations. There were mass meetings 
in Berlin, with great placards on which was written 
"Give us the Fourteen Points!" But they, like all 
the world, saw that the peace treaty did not fulfill those 
promises, and carved up Europe regardless of racial 
boundaries and economic sense. Vienna was condemned 
to death. The independence of Poland was created 
at the expense of large German populations placed under 
Polish domination. Germans and Austrians in the 
Tyrol were handed over to Italy. And in every clause 
of the peace treaty the German people saw themselves 
doomed, as they believed sincerely, though erroneously, 
I think, to an industrial and commercial servitude which 
would deprive them for generations to come of all 
profit out of their own labor, and all hope of recovery. 
Worse to them even than that pronouncement of doom 
were the menaces by which it was accompanied. English 
newspapers, which had cried out to God for vengeance 
against the "Hun" who sent aircraft to bomb defense- 
less cities, advocated the bombing of German cities, if 
the representatives of Germany refused to sign the 
terms of peace. "Strong Allied airdromes on the 
Rhine and in Poland," wrote the Evening News, "well 
equipped with the best machines and pilots, could quickly 
persuade the inhabitants of the large German cities 

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of the folly of having refused to sign the peace. Those 
considerations are elementary. For that reason they 
may be overlooked. They are milk for babes." 

That last sentence was a sneer against certain senti- 
mentalists in England who desired to raise the blockade 
and allow German babies to get some milk. But to 
enforce the terms of peace, if refusal were contemplated, 
German babies and German women were to be blown 
to bits in large numbers as a means of persuasion to 
their statesmen. The German women and children, 
indeed, were to be the victims of our policy of enforcing 
the peace, in any case, and so it happened. The Junkers 
were still well fed in their country houses. Ludendorff 
did not go without his meals. Von Tirpitz did not 
have to swallow his whiskers. It was the women and 
children, overcrowded in tenement houses, dying of 
tuberculosis, ravaged by rickets, who were made the 
hostages of the German government. As pointed out 
by Mr. Norman Angell in his book, The Fruits of Vic- 
tory, Mr. Winston Churchill described the character of 
the blockade when speaking in the House of Commons 
on March 3, 1919. 

"This weapon of starvation falls mainly on the women 
and children, upon the old and the weak and the poor, 
after all the fighting has stopped." And then he added, 
not a plea for mercy, but the cold statement that we 
were enforcing the blockade with vigor, and would 
continue to do so. 

Mr. Norman Angell is not going beyond the bounds 
of justice when he shows the utter lack of connection 
in the public mind or conscience between our foreign 
policy and the famine in Europe. 

This was revealed in a curious way at the time of the signature 
of the Treaty. At the gathering of the representatives the German 
delegate spoke sitting down. It turned out afterward that he was 
so ill and distraught that he dared not trust himself to stand up. 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Every paper was full of the incident, as also that the paper-cutter in 
front of him on the table was found afterward to be broken; that he 
placed his gloves upon the copy of the Treaty, and that he had not 
thrown away his cigarette on entering the room. These were the 
offenses which prompted the Daily Mail to say: "After this 
no one will treat the Hun as civilized or repentant." Almost the 
entire Press rang with the story of "Rantzau's insult." But not 
one paper, so far as I could discover, paid any attention to what 
Rantzau had said. He said: 

"I do not want to answer by reproaches to reproaches. . . . 
Crimes in war may not be excusable, but they are committed in 
the struggle for victory and in the defense of national existence, and 
passions are aroused which make the conscience of peoples blunt. 
The hundreds of thousands of noncombatants who have perished 
since November nth by reason of the blockades were killed with 
cold deliberation, after our adversaries had conquered and victory 
had been assured them. Think of that when you speak of guilt 
and punishment." 

No one seems to have noticed this trifle in presence of the hei- 
nousness of the cigarette, the glove, and the other crimes. Yet this 
was an insult indeed. If true, it shamefully disgraced England — 
if England is responsible. The public, presumably, did not care 
whether it was true or not. 

It is, of course, certain that after the signature of the 
terms of peace the German officials delayed the fulfill- 
ment of its provisions, did all in their power to post- 
pone some of its exactions, failed, not perhaps delib- 
erately (because of the weakness of undernourished 
workmen), to make full deliveries of coal, and in the 
figures presented to the Allied experts from time to 
time, underestimated the taxable wealth of Germany 
and her industrial possibilities. That was inevitable 
and natural. Even people condemned to death do not 
slip the noose gratefully upon their own necks and ask 
to be called early for execution. With regard to figures, 
no amount of anxiety for arithmetical accuracy could 
prevent a wide difference of calculation between German 
and Allied experts, both of whom were, and still are, 
without exact evidence as to the possibilities of German 

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industrial and commercial development upon which 
the payments of indemnities depend. The factors 
were then, and still are, uncertain. They depend upon 
the capacity of other countries to buy German goods, 
upon the future of Russia, the value of the German 
mark, the policy of the United States regarding 
credits, the attitude of France regarding Westphalia 
and Siberia, the good or bad behavior of the Poles, 
the health and energy of German workmen, the reason 
or madness of the Supreme Council and Allied politicians, 
— all very unstable and incalculable quantities upon 
which to base an estimate of German wealth. Naturally 
the German experts presented figures which opposed 
those of the Allied experts. That was not a crime. It 
was not even insincerity. It was a psychological in- 
evitability. Yet we made a crime of it, and French 
and British newspapers flamed into passion against the 
"insults" of the German offers. "They will cheat you 
yet, those Junkers!" They were proclaimed to be 
"ridiculous and insulting" in the French Press, before 
ever they had been received in Paris. All German 
offers, even to reconstruct the devastated territories, 
were denounced as "the deliberate evasion of solemn 
pledges," and the months dragged on, and the years, 
while "the fruits of victory" were counted on un- 
planted trees, and could not be harvested. 



In the Allied countries men who called themselves 
statesmen and were mostly little pettifogging politi- 
cians worrying about their own places and prestige and 
public favor, proclaimed the most fantastic promises 
to their peoples about making Germany "pay." The 
Germans were to be made to pay all the war costs of 
all the Allied nations, including pensions. When one 

149 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

sets out the simple fact again that England in four 
and a half years of war spent as much as in two and a 
half centuries before, it is self-evident that no one nation, 
not even Germany, which had also exhausted her re- 
sources by the same supreme effort in destructive energy, 
could pay back all that expenditure of all the Allied 
nations, nor any great part of it. Yet the politicians 
promised, and knew that they lied. They promised 
in order to keep their people quiet. They promised 
to get the people's votes, but presently the time came 
when the people became impatient and full of wrath — 
especially the French people, who had suffered most 
and had been promised most, and looked out upon their 
ravaged lands. In April of 1921 the Bill of Costs was 
at last presented to Germany. After many rejected 
offers from the German experts the indemnities were 
fixed at figures below those regarded as a minimum in 
Paris, but so enormous that the figures meant nothing 
to the minds of people unused to the arithmetic of inter- 
national finance, and were incalculable in their effect 
upon the world's markets even to financial experts. 
In the Paris Resolutions, afterward modified a little in 
method of payment, the Germans were called upon to 
pay 226 milliards of gold marks, spread over a period 
covering forty-two years, in the following sums: 



Years 



Amounts 



1921-22. 
I923-25, 
I926-28 , 
I929-3I, 
1932-62 



2 milliards of gold marks, annually 
„ << «< << << « 

4 

_ (( it << (C (C 

6 " " " 



At the time of the presentation of this Bill of Costs 
it required fifteen German paper marks to make one 
gold mark, and it was of course obvious that apart from 
a transfer of currency insignificant compared with the 

ISO 



THE NEW GERMANY 

total bill, and by a transfer of credits and securities of 
very little value, owing to Germany's financial condi- 
tion after war, the only method of payment would be 
by exports of merchandise, mainly in the form of manu- 
factured articles. 

In order to cover their own national expenses and pay 
the reparations demanded, the Germans would have to 
increase their exports by at least five times the prewar 
figures, exceeding the combined total exportation of 
manufactured goods by America and England. To 
achieve such a vast increase in exports after a devastat- 
ing and ruinous war, the loss of colonies and ships, the 
slaughter of two million men, the undernourishment 
of many laborers during the years of war, the deteriora- 
tion of machinery and rolling stock, and the heavy 
taxation of capital, would require an industrial effort 
amounting to the miraculous. If it were achieved, 
Germany would capture the world's trade and kill 
the exports of many competing nations, including 
England and the United States, but at the cost, perhaps, 
of her own well-being, owing to the necessity of low 
wages, severe restriction of food imports, and the enor- 
mous taxation upon all that terrific energy. 

It was impossible for the average German to say 
whether such an adventure in arithmetic were humanly 
possible or not. Presented with the figures, he was 
stunned by their enormity and believed that acceptance 
would involve his people in a life of slavery for genera- 
tions to come. He was tempted to repudiate them and 
let happen what would happen. The German govern- 
ment under Doctor Simon resigned rather than sign. It 
seemed doubtful whether any government could be 
found to sign. Days passed, and no government was 
found to accept the humiliating task, while the date of 
the ultimatum fast approached. 

As it approached, passion rose high in France; the 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

French people, with some exceptional groups, were 
enraged with the delay in getting their fruits of victory, 
any fruit. "Make them pay!" was the shout of the 
French masses, led by the French newspapers, and 
echoed, more doubtfully, in England. Aristide Briand, 
Prime Minister of France, promised to make them pay 
by sending "the gendarme to put his hand on the collar 
of the debtor to collect the debt." His gendarme was 
the 1919 class of twenty-two-year-old youths, whom he 
called to the colors and sent up to the Rhine, ready to 
march into Westphalia, or the Ruhr, as it was called, 
and seize the German industrial cities like Essen, Elber- 
feld, and others, with their chief coal fields and factories, 
in lieu of payment. By such an act they would have 
crippled Germany, but also they would have lost the 
greater part of their indemnities, too. And by such an 
act they would have insured another war for another 
generation of French and German youth, without any 
manner of doubt. But a few days before the ultimatum 
expired, a new Chancellor, Doctor Wirth, found a gov- 
ernment which agreed to sign. And the terms to 
which his signature was written as a solemn pledge were 
read out by him in a deadly silence of the Reichstag. 
Germany had promised to pay, and thereto had 
plighted her faith, as far as human possibility. 

VI 

It was not long after that pledge was made that I 
went to Berlin to study the conditions of life in Germany, 
and to get some clear idea, by diligent inquiry of many 
minds, upon the possibility of payment and the chance 
of the future in Germany. 

Apart altogether from information I obtained from 
German bankers, business men, political leaders, and 
ordinary citizens, checked, but mostly confirmed, by 

152 



THE NEW GERMANY 

our own financial experts, and by one very wise Amer- 
ican — Raymond Swing of the New York Herald — my 
personal observations of Berlin life showed me in a 
very few days that a remarkable change had come over 
the spirit and conditions of the people during the time 
that had followed the war and the defeat. There in 
Berlin, and in other cities through which I passed, the 
people were no longer dejected and despairing. Most 
of them, the ordinary citizens, were wonderfully cheer- 
ful. Something had happened to brace them up, to 
make them keen, to give them a resolute and confident 
purpose. It was easy to see what had happened. It 
was work. Everybody who could get any kind of job 
was working at high pressure and with enthusiasm. A 
peculiar phenomenon in Europe after war! 

I had just left England and London, in the time of 
the coal strike and of the greatest trade slump in our 
modern history, when the streets of the poorer districts 
were thronged with listless, workless men, hanging round 
the labor exchanges to get their government "doles," 
or rattling collecting boxes in the faces of the passers-by. 
Everywhere in London then, and in other cities, one 
noticed slackness in the mental attitude of men, working 
or not working. They were not keen on their jobs. 
They were lazy or "tired." The laboring men in trade 
unions were deliberately limiting their output, so that 
to watch, as some days I watched, bricklayers building 
new houses, was a mixture of tragedy and comedy — 
comedy because of their Pavlova-like attitudes with 
hods and ladders, their languorous way with bricks 
and mortar, their frequent rests between the exertion 
of squaring one brick and another, their long and careful 
lighting of pipes, their eloquence and argument among 
one another as to the right thing to do, if ever it were 
done; and tragedy because of this object lesson in the 
way to lose our chance of recovery. ... In Hyde 
11 153 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Park of an afternoon I saw always immense numbers 
of men reading newspapers, or dozing in the sunshine, 
or staring idly at the passers-by. They seemed to have 
no work to do, and to have no desire for it. 

In Berlin it was different. There was no lounging 
during work hours. Crowds of young men and women 
were hurrying about, intent on some kind of business. 
Even in the hotels, the men who made a continual 
traffic from entrance hall to the rooms were not there 
for idle pastime or amorous dalliance. They came with 
little black satchels under their arms, stuffed with 
papers, and, sitting in groups, discussed estimates, 
offers, exports, prices, all kinds of business. They 
seemed to be doing well, doing, at least, a lot of business, 
whatever their profits might be. These crowds in the 
streets of Berlin were obviously satisfied with the way 
things were going with their own affairs. There was 
no hangdog look about them, but alertness of look. 
Their clothes were rather shabby. I noticed a good 
many men of the working classes still wearing their 
old field-gray jackets without badge or shoulder straps 
— three years after war — and the German women had 
not the chic touch of French or English women, but 
they were clean and neat and good to see if they were 
pretty. The war strain seemed to have been lifted 
from them. Hunger no longer gnawed at them. It 
was clear to see that hundreds of thousands of Berlin 
folk not only had enough for the necessities of life, but 
a little margin beyond that for the good fun of life in 
hours of leisure after a working day. 

I went one evening with a British officer, two German 
bankers — and brothers — and a German lady to Luna 
Park, one of the popular joy places of Berlin. An 
immense place of plaster buildings, fantastic as a futur- 
ist nightmare, it has a vast outdoor restaurant built in 
a series of terraces around the arena where at night 

154 



THE NEW GERMANY 

there are fireworks displays and always a band playing 
gay music before a painted scene of wild and whirling 
women. The outdoor restaurant holds fifty thousand 
people, and on the evening I went, typical, I was told, 
of any other evening, there was hardly a vacant place. 
I watched all these people curiously, and one of the 
German bankers smiled at me and said, "Do they look 
like barbarians — the Huns?" They were a vast crowd 
of bourgeoisie — clerks, shopgirls, working-class fam- 
ilies, respectable middle-class men and women with 
their children. It was a hot evening, and all the girls 
were in light cotton frocks, with very little underneath, 
I guess. "Cheap stuff, " said the German lady by my 
side, "but easily made and good to wash." Every- 
body was drinking light beer or coffee, or sipping iced 
drinks, or eating ices. I reckoned that it would cost 
them about five to ten marks a head, fivepence to ten- 
pence in English money, ten cents to twenty in American 
money. There was no rowdyism, no drunkenness. I 
only saw one policeman in the great crowds, and he was 
not required by people who were enjoying themselves 
in a cheerful, orderly way. The side-shows, with special 
entrance fees, were crammed. People were wasting 
paper marks in lotteries for chocolate and bottles of 
scent, spending paper marks freely on "flip-flaps" 
and " wiggly-woggles " and scenic railways. 

"How is it," I said, "that all these people have so 
much money to spend? I cannot understand it, after 
an inquiry into the wages of clerks and shopgirls — 
seven hundred and fifty marks a month for clerks, 
much less than that for shopgirls, and the mark worth 
no more than twopence in purchasing power, even 
within Germany, and half that in foreign exchange." 

"Frankly, I cannot understand it, either," said the 
German lady. "I would like to tell you that this place 
gives you a false idea of our prosperity, and that there 

i5S 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

is terrible poverty in the working districts. That would 
not be quite true. There is terrible poverty, still, as in 
all great cities of Germany, but this scene is typical 
of many others. It shows that millions of people have 
a little money to spend on pleasure." 

She thought out an explanation. I think it was a 
sound one. "It is like this. A single girl, or young 
man, having to live on what she or he earns alone, has 
a hard struggle. It is almost impossible to live on seven 
hundred and fifty marks a month. The cheapest shirt 
costs fifty marks; a pair of boots two hundred and fifty; 
the simplest, cheapest meal in a restaurant twenty 
marks, and then not enough for health and strength. 
But families pool their earnings. If there are two or 
three sisters and a brother all working and living at 
home with a father and mother getting good wages, 
then there is a margin for pleasure like this. They 
stint and scrape at home, where they live over- 
crowded, in order to come out in the evenings and 
enjoy themselves. They must have this kind of 
pleasure — fresh air, music, cheerful company, the joy 
of youth. There is too much love of pleasure, and 
it leads to immorality. Young girls will sell them- 
selves for a pretty frock or a night of dancing. The 
war loosened the old moralities. Youth is enormously 
tempted. " 

After that evening in Luna Park, I went to an office 
in Berlin which has to do with the feeding of destitute 
children by German charity. It was a German lady 
who gave me some information about the state of child 
life in Berlin. She was a young woman, with the fine 
gold-spun hair of the prettiest type of Prussian girl, and 
blue eyes. I guessed by her manner that she belonged 
to the aristocratic caste. She spoke frankly of the im- 
provement in the condition of children, thanks to the 
charity of the Quakers, the Americans, and the work of 

156 



THE NEW GERMANY 

German societies. But there was still a great deal of 
tuberculosis, owing to overcrowding in tenement houses, 
and undernourishment among children of parents 
who could not get work because of ill health or the 
crippling wounds of war. There was still a great lack of 
milk for babies. 

Then she spoke of the professional classes, and put 
herself among them. 

"We are hard hit, and do not get much help. A 
pension which was good before the war is now no good at 
all, owing to the fall of the mark. Even our children 
do not get the care of the working classes, perhaps 
because of our pride. I have a little boy — " 

She hesitated at making personal revelations, but 
then explained that her husband, a German officer, had 
been killed in the war, and that her boy never had 
enough to eat until, swallowing pride, she had sent 
him to the soup kitchens. She was paid seven hundred 
and fifty marks a month for her present work, which 
she was lucky to get. But without family help it was 
not enough for life. 

"Clothes eat up our wages," she said. "In work 
like this, receiving visitors, one must dress decently. 
It is very difficult. One has to go to bed while one's 
underclothing is in the wash!" 

She shook hands and laughed. 

"Perhaps things will get better presently." 

That was a little glimpse behind the scenes of the 
outward welfare I saw in Berlin, and doubtless there 
are hundreds of women like that who have to fight a 
desperate struggle for decent livelihood, as in most 
countries of Europe. 

That did not alter my conviction that Germany, as a 
whole, was recovering from the exhaustion of war and 
regaining a fair measure of prosperity, by a combined 
intense industrial effort. Her factories were producing 

157 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

again at full pace, and at a price which could undersell 
all competitors. 

Better than statistics, clearer to the vision, in showing 
the variety and activity of German manufacturers, was 
a visit to a great stores, like that of Wertheim, corre- 
sponding to Harrod's, Barker's, and Selfridge's in Eng- 
land, or Marshal Field's in Chicago. On floor after 
floor was a display of manufactured articles, porcelain, 
pottery, leather goods, metal ware, every object of house- 
hold use and ornament, excellent in design, and, reckoned 
in foreign exchanges, marvelously cheap. Reckoning 
the mark at one penny, here was a competition which 
would beat the markets of the world. I was particu- 
larly struck by the book department, remembering the 
shoddy appearance of English publications and their 
abominable cost — a bad novel on bad paper for seven- 
and-sixpence, a "cheap" reprint for two shillings, a 
volume of history or philosophy for fifteen shillings, 
horribly produced in flimsy bindings. These German 
books were printed on splendid paper, well illustrated, 
well bound, most tastefully produced. A new novel 
was fifteen marks, or one-and-threepence; the classics 
of the world were to be had for eight and a half 
marks. 

But the metal goods were even more astonishing in 
their cheapness, and as I reckoned about a quarter of 
the price to be found in English shops. 

"Tariff* or no tariff", " said a friend of mine, "how are 
we going to compete with German goods when, for 
instance, a safety razor, equal in quality to Gillette's, 
can be sold wholesale for ninepence?" 

He laughed, but I detected a note of anxiety in his 
voice when he said: 

"Germany is working as no other people in the world, 
and her workingmen are getting sevenpence halfpenny 
an hour, compared with one-and-ninepence, or half a 

158 



THE NEW GERMANY 

crown in England, producing better stuff, and without 
limitation of output. What's going to be England's 
chance? Hugo Stinnes and the big trusts are organiz- 
ing the greatest industrial machine the world has ever 
seen." 

VII 

Every student of German life is now talking of Stinnes 
as the great industrial autocrat of Germany, and outside 
Germany he is regarded as a dark, sinister figure, a 
kind of evil genius, like a German Lenin, though his 
philosophy is the antithesis of Bolshevism. He is, 
undoubtedly, the most powerful personality in Germany 
to-day, the owner of sixty newspapers serving the 
interests of the Deutsches Volkspartei, and preaching 
his own gospel, which is the industrial supremacy of 
Germany by intensive production based upon cheap 
labor and revolutionary methods of manufacture, 
obtaining the highest degree of efficiency, power, combi- 
nation, and distribution. Creating a gigantic trust 
for the polling of immense resources of raw material, 
capital, and labor, his method is to build vertically from 
coal, iron, and steel to all branches of manufacture in 
which these raw materials are used, and to capture the 
world's markets by a quality and cheapness which will 
put German goods beyond competition. As a young 
man, he inherited enormous estates, mines, ironworks, 
and royalties valued at seven million pounds sterling. 
There was no branch of his own industries in which he 
did not have technical and personal knowledge. Not 
the humblest laborer in his employ could stand up and 
tell him about conditions of life which he had not learned 
by sweat of body and toil of mind. He had worked as 
a pit boy, coal hewer, mine foreman. He had been 
stoker, engineer, ship's officer, and sea captain. He 
was a slave driver to his own workmen, and imported 

159 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Polish labor to keep wages low. His philosophy of life 
would have been heartily indorsed by a Manchester 
mill owner of the early nineteenth century, using women 
and children as slaves of the machines. The Stinnes 
Trust consisted last year of six great companies employ- 
ing two hundred and fifty thousand men and having a 
capital of twelve million marks, but always their tenta- 
cles are stretching out to more industries — of electricity, 
coal, iron, shipping, and factory work, absorbing their 
capital and power and extending their activities over 
fresh fields. Every form of by-product is used and 
marketed. Other countries are being invaded by the 
Stinnes power. The blast furnaces of Austria are work- 
ing again with the raw material sent to them by his 
headquarters. He is negotiating in Hungary for enor- 
mous ironworks. The iron ore of Upper Silesia finds 
its way to his factories. His agents are active in 
Russia, and he is ready to rebuild their worn - out 
railways, to manufacture engines at the rate of eight 
thousand a year, and trucks at the rate of sixty thou- 
sand, when the time comes for Russia to do business 
again. 

Stinnes is only one, though the most powerful, of the 
German industrial kings who are succeeding to the old 
monarchies of the Empire. August Thyssen is another 
employing a hundred and twenty-five thousand men, 
of whom sixty-five thousand are at Muelheim, which 
is one great city of furnaces and factories. Peter 
Kloeckner is another of the steel and iron magnates 
with a capital as great as that of old man Thyssen, and 
second in the list of coal producers. More romantic 
to the imagination is the transformation of Krupp's. 
After the years of war and prewar activity during which 
they produced nothing but great guns and armaments 
of all kinds, they accepted instantly the conditions of 
military defeat and with marvelous rapidity and skill 

1 60 



THE NEW GERMANY 

adapted their machinery to the demands of peace. 
Railway engines, agricultural implements, cash regis- 
ters, every kind of metal work, are produced in vast 
quantities in the sheds where great guns and machine 
guns were once produced, and in every part of the world 
the agents of Krupp are exploring new markets, arrang- 
ing contracts, feeling the pulse of*trade. 

These trusts are acquiring a tremendous social power 
in the German state which one day may quickly take 
over the state. Already they are proposing to tax 
themselves for the benefit of the German Reich, accord- 
ing to their own calculations of industrial revenue 
and the taxable value of their output. A certain amount 
of latitude is given to the views of the workers, who are 
represented by councils, and their wages are regulated 
according to the standard cost of life sufficient to keep 
them in working health. In the summer of 192 1 that 
was reckoned at about sixty marks for a full working 
day, or five shillings in English money. It is to some 
extent an actual demonstration of the French syndicat 
idea, and it is within the bounds of possibility that it is 
a new form of government by industrial trusts grad- 
ually absorbing the power and control of the state. 
At present, however, political ideas are being kept 
subordinate to the need of the economic reconstruction 
of Germany, and it is to the industrial genius and energy 
of these organizers that Germany owes it that she is 
recovering steadily from the enormous exhaustion of 
war. 

By the summer of 192 1 Germany's coal production 
amounted to about two-thirds of the prewar quantity; 
and half the amount of prewar tonnage (though largely 
under foreign flags) was coming to the port of Hamburg, 
which had been silent and deserted for so many years. 
The deposits in the big banks had gone up by fifty per 
cent in little more than a year. The effect of the 

161 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

recovery of trade was visible in the life of the people. 
When I arrived in Berlin at the beginning of June all 
food cards had been done away with, except the bread 
card, which was due to go within a few weeks. Mean- 
while it was possible to buy white rolls, and in some 
cases white bread, without cards in the shops. The 
harvest reports were'svery good, and it was estimated 
that for the first time since the end of 191 6 the supply 
of cereals for bread would be sufficient. Germany's 
trade was increasing in many countries. A special 
push was being made in the "neutral" nations and in 
South America. While in February, 1921, as compared 
with February, 1920, South America's trade with the 
whole of Europe went down by nearly fifty per cent, 
that with Germany alone increased by twenty per cent. 
In 1919 Germany sent to the United States about ten 
million dollars' worth of goods; in 1920 she sent 
eighty-eight million dollars' worth. She had Great 
Britain thoroughly beaten in the automobile trade 
in European countries, sending to Switzerland, for 
example, motor cars, motor cycles, and accessories to 
sixty times the value of British exports to that country. 
In Holland especially she had a stronger commercial 
hold than in the year before the war. 

All these facts reveal the progress of German trade, 
astonishing for a country so utterly defeated, so drained 
of blood and treasure, so powerless, for a time, under 
the military and economic menace of Great Britain and 
France. Yet this progress did not amount, even then, 
to the prosperity of prewar conditions, though, to judge 
from the fantasies of French and British newspapers, 
one might imagine that Germany, by some economic 
miracle, had gained new and enormous wealth. The 
miracle really was that in two and a half years of peace 
she was about two-thirds "normal" compared with 
her prewar trade and leaving out of account her vast 

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war debts and the indemnities which she had pledged 
herself to pay. 

VIII 

In Berlin I attended the meeting of the Reichstag when 
Doctor Wirth, the Chancellor, outlined, broadly and 
vaguely, the manner in which he proposed that Germany 
should pay that Bill of Costs. All his oratory could be 
reduced to four words — intense industry, economy, 
efficiency. It was, nevertheless, a historic scene, 
memorable and exciting to me, as to all those German 
Deputies who listened to words which emphasized 
heavily and without optimism the enormous burden 
which Germany must support for half a century. From 
the extreme Left, where sat the little communist group, 
came derisive cries, and from the extreme Right of 
Junker tradition occasional outbursts of anger and 
scorn. But mostly those men sat silent, moody, 
introspective. 

To me the scene in the assembly and in the lobbies 
outside was astonishing as a psychological adventure. 
Here were many of the men who in this same building 
had heard the declaration of war and echoed the procla- 
mation of many victories, had listened exultantly to 
the terms of peace which would be imposed upon Eng- 
land and France, had year after year voted the sup- 
plies to carry on the war, and, at last, had faced, here 
again, the news of utter, irretrievable defeat and ruin. 
Count BernstorfF passed me in the lobby, and I had 
some words with him, watching his debonair manner, 
detecting a faint trace of American accent. If he had 
been a greater diplomat and an honester man, perhaps 
Germany would not have lost the war. . . . Scheide- 
mann went by, the Socialist who put his party at the 
service of the militarists with the same patriotic fervor 
as the Labor Party did in England. . . . Not many 

163 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

other men did I know, even by name, but I knew them 
as those who represented the German people at a time 
when any Englishman coming to this Reichstag would 
have been killed like a rat, and when No-Man's Land, 
with its death pits, divided them and us. Queer to be 
standing in the midst of them, listening to that talk! 
A little shiver passed down my spine as the thought 
came to me. A German coming to our House of Com- 
mons for the first time after war would perhaps be 
affected in the same way. 

The change in the attitude of men one to another 
was suggested at a dinner table in Berlin one night, 
when I sat next to a German banker who had fought all 
through the war, and opposite a British major who was 
four years on the western front. It was the banker's 
brother who made the remark, in an aside to me. 

"How ridiculous is war!" he said. "Three years ago 
your major and my brother would have tried to kill 
each other at sight. Now they are sitting at the same 
table, discussing political economy, and there is no 
temptation in the knives beside their plates!" 

This gentleman made another remark which interested 
me. We were walking down the Friedrichstrasse, 
speaking English in loud voices, because of the crowd 
about us. No one turned to glance at us, there was no 
hostile look because of the English speech, and the 
German by my side pointed the moral. 

"You see, we can speak English without arousing 
dislike. It is only the Germans in foreign countries 
who have to lower their voices when they speak their 
hated tongue." 

There is indeed in Germany now no touch of hostility 
to English folk. On the contrary, their nationality 
is a passport to German favor in the hotels, in the 
street cars, anywhere. We are popular, strange as it 
may seem, and the Germans believe in our sense of 

164 



THE NEW GERMANY 

magnanimity and in our tradition for fair play. "Gott 
strafe England!" is a forgotten song, never, as a matter 
of fact, well known in Germany, though we made the 
most of it in war time. The strangest, most paradox- 
ical, most grotesque revulsion of popular sentiment — 
yet, on the whole, hopeful to humanity — which struck 
my imagination in Berlin during that visit was when I 
stood amid a crowd of Germans reading a bulletin 
from Upper Silesia on the board of a newspaper office. 
It described the arrival of British troops into the dis- 
puted zone between the Poles and Germans. The 
Black Watch had come, and officers and men were 
being carried shoulder high and garlanded with flowers 
by the German population. The Black Watch! Three 
years before they were called "The Ladies from Hell" 
by the German soldiers, who dreaded their bayonet 
work, their ruthlessness in killing. Now they were 
the champions of German claims, the darlings of the 
German crowds. 

"The English are our friends," said a German in 
the crowd. "The French will always be our enemies." 

I moved away from the crowd with a sense of the irony 
of life and the idiocy of men. For four and a half 
years of frightful history we had called the Germans 
"Huns," had exhausted all our wealth and hurled 
the flower of our youth into the furnace fires in order 
to kill them in great numbers, as they killed us. The 
French had been our comrades, and we had (as we 
thought) sealed our friendship eternally by the mystical 
union of common sacrifice. Now British soldiers were 
being carried shoulder high by German people, and the 
French were scowling at us, even in Paris, if we spoke 
English so that the passers-by could hear. The bottom 
was knocked out of the meaning of the war, if ever it 
had any meaning beyond the bloody rivalry of politi- 
cians using the bodies and souls of men for their dirty 

165 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

game, and the insanity of mobs, deluded by race pas- 
sion, inflamed by their leaders. Is there any sense at 
all in the turning of the wheel of international policy, 
so that our enemies of yesterday are our friends of to-day, 
and our friends of to-day our enemies of to-morrow? 

Norman Angell, in his book, The Fruits of Victory, 
points out the absurdity of these rapid changes: 

At the head of the Polish armies is Marshal Pilsudski, who fought 
under Austro-German command against Russia. His ally is the 
Ukrainian adventurer, General Petlura, who first made a separate 
peace at Brest-Litovsk, and entreated them to let the German armies 
into the Ukraine, and to deliver to them the stores of grain. These 
in May, 1920, were the friends of the Allies. The Polish Prime 
Minister at the time we were aiding Poland was Baron Bilinski, a 
gentleman who filled the same post in the Austrian Cabinet which 
let loose the world war, insisted hotly on the ultimatum to Serbia, 
helped to ruin the finances of the Hapsburg dominions by war, and 
then, after the collapse, repeated the same operations in Poland. 
On the other side, the command has passed, it is said, to General 
Brusiloff, who again and again saved the eastern front from German 
and Austrian offensives. He is now the "enemy," and his oppo- 
nents our "allies." They are fighting to tear the "Ukraine, which 
means all South Russia, away from the Russian state. The pre- 
ceding year we sent millions to achieve the opposite result. The 
French sent their troops to Odessa, and we gave our tanks to Deni- 
kin, in order to enable him to recover this region for imperial Russia." 

How long is this madness going to prevail in Europe ? 
Is there no hope at all in the common sense of peoples, 
seeing at last the monstrous absurdity of these group- 
ings and regroupings of armed powers controlled and 
directed now this way, now that, by the sinister ambi- 
tions of statesmen who shift their principles and trans- 
fer their allegiance as easily as they change their shirts ? 



IX 

When I was last in Germany two thoughts dominated 
the mind of every man and woman with whom I spoke, 

166 



THE NEW GERMANY 

and both thoughts were inseparably linked. Could 
Germany pay the vast indemnities to which she was 
pledged, and would France and Great Britain so divide 
Upper Silesia that the Poles would remain in possession 
of the greatest stronghold of German industry? That 
the payment of indemnities depended upon the settle- 
ment of Upper Silesia in favor of German claims and 
German votes was the absolute and sincere belief not 
only of the Germans themselves, but of all British 
experts with whom I spoke. More even than the 
economic position of Germany was involved, though 
that would decide the fate of Europe. The German 
people believed it to be a test case of justice and "fair 
play" among the democracies of Europe. If the Polish 
insurgents were allowed to hold what they had seized 
against the authority of the Inter-Allied Commission 
and contrary to the German votes of six to four in the 
plebiscite which had been taken under Allied control, 
then Germany would know that in spite of her pledge to 
pay the penalties of defeat — and her payments — she 
was to be given no chance of recovery, nor any justice, 
and that the policy of France was to prevent her recov- 
ery upon any terms whatever. 

That was the talk of a group of young Germans, 
obviously ex-officers, with whom I sat at table, waiting 
for an interview with Herr Stresemann, the leader of 
the Deutsches Folkspartei and the political representa- 
tive of Hugo Stinnes, the industrial magnate. The 
scene was curious, for it was in the club of the Folks- 
partei after Doctor Wirth's speech in the Reichstag out- 
lining the program for the payment of indemnities. 
With young Raymond Swing, the American correspond- 
ent, I was shown into an antechamber divided by a 
curtain from a room in which Stresemann was speaking 
to the members of his party. The waiter placed chairs 
for us and offered us refreshment. There was nothing 

167 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

to hinder us from standing by the curtain and listening 
to the words which Stresemann was speaking with 
harsh and rapid eloquence. I could not help wondering 
what would have happened if two Germans had entered 
the Constitutional Club while Lord Curzon, perhaps, 
was addressing a private gathering of Tories and out- 
lining the future policy of his party. They would not 
have been received with such friendly confidence. . . . 
Presently the speech ended and there was a surging move- 
ment of men, among whom were a few ladies, to the 
room in which I sat with my friend. Groups took 
possession of small tables, ordered beer and sand- 
wiches, and discussed their leader's speech. Although 
it was the eve of a day when Germany was face to face 
with the gigantic burdens of her war penalties, there 
was no sign of dejection in this crowd of politicians. 
They were cheerful, vivacious, argumentative, and 
keen. Herr Stresemann, buttonholed on all sides, 
broke away to ask for my patience a little while longer 
and introduced me to the group of young men who 
made a place for me at their table. Instantly the con- 
versation turned to Upper Silesia, and I was asked why 
the Allies had allowed the Poles to "jump the claim" 
at the very time when Germany was asked to pay in- 
demnities which would strain all her industrial resources. 
Before I could answer, Stresemann came to me and said, 
"At last!" and led me away to a little table reserved for 
himself. 

"What were you talking about?" he asked, glancing 
at the group of men I had left; and when I said, "Upper 
Silesia" and laughed, he started at once upon that 
subject, which was a kind of obsession in the German 
mind. 

"Yes," he said, as though continuing a discussion. 
"If we lose Upper Silesia, or any. considerable part of 
it, we shall be unable to pay the indemnities. Our 

1 68 



THE NEW GERMANY 

whole economic position depends on that. There lie 
our main sources of raw material for manufactures. 
There exist our greatest strongholds of industry. Ger- 
man capital, labor, and organization have built up 
the prosperity of Silesia. Take that from us and we 
are crippled." 

I had a long conversation with this energetic little 
man, who, everybody told me, was the ablest politician 
in Germany, sure of being Chancellor after the down- 
fall of Doctor Wirth's weak Coalition. Reactionary in 
the sense of supporting the old traditions of German 
national pride and monarchist sentiment — ''the Kaiser 
did not will the war," he said, very solemnly — he told 
me frankly that he has no use for democracy unless 
well disciplined and kept working. But he is progres- 
sive according to the ideals of Stinnes, his master, 
upon economic lines of advance. 

He spoke to me at length about French policy and 
his voice took a deeper note of passion. 

"The instincts of the German people," he said, "are 
for peace. Our future is in peace and not in war. We 
would willingly have made friends with France and 
worked to repair her ruin, if her people had been only a 
little generous, only a little courteous, after our defeat. 
But they have done their best, and are doing it, to 
arouse feelings of enmity and rage. In our occupied 
districts they have been needlessly arrogant." 

He told me a story of how the French general fined 
the Mayor of Duisburg (which French troops entered 
to enforce the signing of the indemnities) the sum of 
five thousand marks for delay in answering his summons 
to appear before him, and when the mayor asked, very 
civilly, "What further wishes have you?" fined him 
another five thousand for using the word "wishes" 
instead of "commands." ... I did not tell Herr 
Stresemann many similar and more painful stories of 
12 169 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

the German treatment of French mayors in time of 
war. I was listening and not talking. 

"Those are but pin pricks," he said, "but in their 
policy and in their Press they reveal a hatred, a desire 
to humiliate, a ruthless injustice, outrageous to our 
honor and dignity, which make it impossible for German 
people to be on friendly terms with them. They are 
deliberately stirring up a desire for revenge instead of 
trying to allay the hatreds of war." 

He told me the French policy was seeking to repair 
three mistakes to which Napoleon confessed. Napoleon 
said, "My mistakes were to let Prussia get strong, to 
let Poland be weak, and to misunderstand Russia." 

"French diplomacy now," said Stresemann, "is to 
weaken Prussia, strengthen Poland, and dominate 
Russia, by setting up a czar as a puppet of France." 

But their policy would fail, he thought, because there 
is no tendency in Germany to break away from Prussia, 
in spite of all French hopes and intrigues, while Poland 
will always be weak and ready to fall apart because 
of the inherent instability of Polish character. As 
for Russia, French puppets like Denikin and Wrangel 
had failed miserably, and modern France, more than 
Napoleon himself, could not understand the spirit of 
Russia. 

Stresemann went at length into the question of repa- 
rations, and held the view that after a few years during 
which Germany will desperately endeavor to fulfill 
her pledges, European peoples will realize the folly of 
maintaining such abnormal conditions in world trade, 
and will call another conference to revise the whole 
treaty of peace and develop a scheme of international 
economic union by which the interests of all European 
nations would be secured, with some better arrange- 
ment than wild, destructive competition with tariff 
walls and national rivalries. He suggested a scheme 

170 



THE NEW GERMANY 

which, as I previously knew, is one of the pet ideas of 
Hugo Stinnes. 

"The war debts of all nations could be wiped out in 
a few years," said Stresemann, "by a small tax on raw 
material, like coal or cotton, paid by all purchasers and 
put into a common pool for that purpose." 

In his opinion Germany, with the best will in the world, 
will be unable to continue her payment of indemnities 
for half a century, and this will be recognized, he thinks, 
by the increasing common sense of European peoples. 

That, undoubtedly, was the official view of the 
Deutsches Falkspartei, but while I was in Berlin it was 
challenged by Rathenau, one of the greatest and most 
liberal-minded of social reformers in Germany, who 
said definitely in the Reichstag, as Minister of Recon- 
struction, "We can pay." Stresemann 's pessimism was 
also repudiated by Scheidemann, leader of the Majority 
Socialists, with whom I had a talk in company with 
his friend and adviser, Doctor Helphand, a millionaire 
Socialist. In reply to my request for an interview, 
they sent an automobile for me in Berlin, and I journeyed 
out through the glorious woods of the Griinewald to the 
edge of Wansee, which is one of the beautiful lakes 
outside the city to which Berliners go for bathing and 
boating. A most pleasant spot for any Socialist, es- 
pecially if he lived in such an elegantly furnished villa 
as that of Doctor Helphand. 

I was curious to see Scheidemann, who helped to 
found the Republic after the war, in which he was but a 
mild critic of German militarism, and a stanch supporter 
of imperial policy and war credits until the great 
wreck happened. He came into the room a few min- 
utes after my arrival, and in a light linen suit he looked 
to me like a French painter, with his tall, rather elegant 
figure, his silver hair, and little pointed beard. 

Scheidemann's view of Germany's future, interpreted 

171 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

in voluble French by Doctor Helphand (whose accent is 
enormously Teutonic), expressed a belief in the possi- 
bility of payment on condition that the German people 
were given peace and fair play by France and England. 
That was an utterly essential condition, but if fulfilled, 
Germany could, without doubt, pay her penalties. 

By demobilization of the army they would save 
eighteen thousand milliards of gold marks annually, 
which would go some way to pay off the yearly tribute. 
They could save other sums by restricting imports of 
luxuries, by more efficient organization, and by heavier 
internal taxation. Then, by intensive production and 
rapid trade development of countries like Russia, they 
could pay their Bill of Costs in full — provided they were 
helped and not hindered. If Upper Silesia were taken 
Germany would be put out of business, and there would 
be no possible payment of indemnities. But if the 
Allies and the United States of America were prepared 
to give German industry a free and full chance, it would 
wipe out all debts. To do that they must have credit 
and capital to renew the wear and tear of machinery 
and rolling stock, enormously depreciated during the 
war, and to develop their industrial possibilities. Russia 
was waiting for them. As soon as the Russians returned 
to ordinary methods of business Germany would be 
ready also to supply them with machinery, engines, 
agricultural implements, every necessity of civilized 
life, so repairing her devastation. By geographical 
position and old trade relations, this task of Russian 
reconstruction would inevitably come to Germany, but 
the German people would only be able to do it in full 
measure, to the benefit of the whole world, if they were 
supported by the credit of the United States, Great 
Britain, and other countries. German labor and 
organization would repay such credit by good interest, 
the fulfillment of all pledges, and the revival of world 

172 



THE NEW GERMANY 

trade. That was the hope of Germany. Surely, said 
Scheidemann, it was also the hope of Europe, whose 
common interests would be served. 

I think these men spoke sincerely. I think that all 
the people I met in Berlin, and afterward on the Rhine, 
faced very frankly the realities of their situation. They 
were under no illusions. They knew and admitted 
that military power had passed from them, at least for 
a long time, and that they could resist nothing in the 
way of armed force set in motion by France and England. 
That, no doubt, is gall and wormwood to the old mili- 
tary caste, the Junkers, and the nationalists who look 
back to the old pomp and parade with the same ferocious 
sentiment, and forward to a war of revenge with hungry 
souls. But I believe, perhaps without sufficient evi- 
dence, that the mass of the German people, and many 
of their Republican leaders, like Scheidemann himself, 
are relieved by the disappearance of militarism, and do 
not want it back again, but look forward honestly to 
an era of industrial peace and progress by which they 
will lift Germany out of financial peril and gain great 
victories, even industrial supremacy, by the energy and 
genius of labor and science. Something has lifted 
from the German spirit. Even in Berlin the people, 
I am told by those who know them better than I do, 
are more gemuthlig, good natured, and open hearted. 
It is militarism which has Been lifted from them. The 
old word "verboten," the old bullying of German 
youth in the barracks and on the parade ground, has 
passed as a dark spell. Everyday life is more agreeable 
without the swaggering bullies on the sidewalks. Citi- 
zenship is no longer oppressed by the military caste. 
Defeat has not been bad for them in every way, and in 
many ways may be the greatest blessing, cleansing to 
the soul of Germany, bracing to her national spirit. 
They see the mockery and futility of war and remember 

173 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

its enormous horror. In the heart of the German people 
there is, I am almost certain, no desire for another bout 
of massacre. If I am right, then Germany will gain 
first the victory for which the Allies professed to fight 
— the death of militarism — and she will emerge from 
all those years of evil cleaner and brighter and kinder, 
with a philosophy of peace which will help to save 
Europe. I may be too hopeful, and the old devil in 
Germany may raise its head again, the devil of military 
pride, when the nation has regained its strength and the 
sword of the Allies has been put aside. 

I would not trust men like Stresemann or Scheidemann 
too far. They belong to the old tradition. I would 
not put any faith in the reform of the Junker, for his 
nature is not to be converted. But I would trust these 
people who bore the agony of war and now pay most 
of its costs. 

It is for us to help the German folk to resist the 
uprising ever again of that devil in a spiked hat which 
once controlled them, and we can only do this by cast- 
ing out our own devil in brass hat or kepi, and the spirit 
of the war makers in old and evil brains. 



V 

THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 



AFTER the day of armistice in 191 8 the French people 
■ were filled with the intoxication of victory. The faith 
with which they had fought had been fulfilled. It was 
the faith that, in spite of the immense power of the 
Germans, their military supremacy at the beginning 
of the war in man power and machine power and the 
crippling blows they inflicted on France in the first 
rush and afterward, they would be beaten in the end, 
beaten to the dust, by the heroism of the French armies, 
the genius of French generals, and the unconquerable 
spirit of the French. 

"On les aural" ("We shall have them!") was the cry 
of France even in days when the enemy was sprawled 
over their northern provinces, when they struck close 
to the heart of Paris, and when masses of French troops 
reeled back from their frightful onslaughts. 

It is true, as I know, that at times this faith in ulti- 
mate victory burned low in the hearts of some French 
men and women whose souls were staggered by the 
enormous and unceasing slaughter of their youth, and 
by the narrow, hair-breadth line which sometimes stood 
between the safety and the death of France — as when 
the Germans reached the Marne in August of the first 
year, and again after years of infernal struggle which 
strewed the fields of France with death, in July, 191 8. 
But the hope never flickered out into absolute despair, 

175 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

rose again into a flame whenever the luck of war changed, 
and became a certainty of victory when, with American 
help and British, Marshal Foch hurled the enemy 
across the Marne for the second time and forced them 
into a retreat which only ended with absolute surrender. 

So France rejoiced on the day of armistice, and on 
many other days that followed. The national pride 
of the French was satisfied. They were not ungrateful 
for the services of their allies and friends, but they 
believed that victory was due most of all to the heroic 
spirit of France. They had fought most, made greatest 
sacrifice, and won by the military genius of Foch. . . . 
As an Englishman, who saw, through the years of 
war, the valor of their men, the miseries and the 
courage of their women, the marvelous, unfailing, 
supernatural heroism of the whole French nation, I 
agree with them, though I know (more than they will 
ever know or admit) what British soldiers did, and, in 
the end, the Americans. Their joy in victory was my 
joy, too, though I wondered then, even in the midst of 
that wild intoxication of the Parisian crowds after the 
surrender of the enemy, how soon it would be before 
they were sobered by the remembrance of their million 
dead, their two million maimed, blind, and shell-shocked 
men, their enormous war debts, their devastated fields, 
their failing birth rate, their price of victory. 

It was not very long before that remembrance, and 
the dreadful actuality of truth, came to them. Even on 
the day of armistice there were thousands of women 
who wept in small rooms and in back streets. "It is 
victory," they said, "but it will not bring back our 
men. " Their tears were hidden because of the rejoicing 
of living youth, and their cry of anguish was stifled so 
that it should not be heard above the cheers which greeted 
the men who had come back with victory on their 
banners. 

176 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

For some time after that the gradual awakening of 
the French people to a sense of dismal reality was 
soothed by the promises of their statesmen and diplo- 
mats. There were to be great fruits of victory harvested 
from the wealth of Germany. By the terms of the 
peace treaty, the Germans would be made to pay for 
all the damage they had done, apart from the resur- 
rection of dead youth. They would be forced to pay 
indemnities which would reconstruct the ravaged lands 
of France, build up her ruins, wipe out the war debt, 
pay for the pensions of crippled men and widowed 
women. German coal from the Saar or the Ruhr 
would be delivered or seized, in return for the German 
destruction of the coal mines around Lens. The finan- 
cial ruin of France, as revealed by the falling value of 
the franc in foreign exchange, and by the budget state- 
ments which admitted a lack of revenue to pay even the 
interests on unimaginable debts, would be restored by 
consignments of German gold. By the peace treaty 
also, ruthless in the severity of its terms to an ignoble 
and brutal enemy, France would be secured from the 
menace of further wars, because Germany would be 
so crushed and strangled and held so tightly to the 
forfeit of future payments, that she would never be 
allowed to recover her strength and power, however 
great the industry of her workers or the genius of her 
financiers. 

ii 

These promises that Germany would pay for every- 
thing were held up to the French people as an induce- 
ment to keep quiet, settle down to work, and suffer 
patiently their present poverty. There was to be a 
period of reconstruction under the direction of a benevo- 
lent government. For a year the word "reconstruc- 
tion" was used as a kind of spell word to lull the impa- 

177 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

tience and growing incredulity of French people. For 
another year French statesmen kept up the hope or the 
pretense that the fruits of victory were only delayed 
and that in a little while Germany would be made to 
disgorge the expenses of the war to the last sou. They 
still maintained their claim to the 261 milliards of francs, 
which represents more than twenty times the annual 
total of German exports at their maximum figure before 
the war, while Britain's claim amounted to 8,000 
millions of pounds sterling, or, according to a financial 
authority, "far more than all the world's gold produc- 
tion since the dawn of history, plus the estimated con- 
tents of all the gold mines at present known. " 

Gradually public opinion in France became impatient 
of promises. They wanted the delivery of the gold. 
They wanted the fulfillment of the Treaty of Versailles, 
utterly and quickly. Germany had not fulfilled it. 
Her coal deliveries were short of the amounts required, 
she had delayed disarmament, she had taken no steps 
to punish her war criminals. Again and again she had 
delayed and dodged the payment of her indemnities. 
Even in the spring of 1921 the Allied governments had 
not decided upon their final terms, and Germany was 
still making offers which the whole of the French Press 
and the majority of French people (with the exception 
of the advanced Socialists) denounced passionately as 
ridiculous and insulting. They were offers mon- 
strously out of keeping with the promise of "the fruits 
of victory," made by French statesmen to their people. 
Passion was rising to dangerous heights in France. 
Ex-President Poincare directed part of it against Eng- 
land. It was per fide Albion again thwarting the fulfill- 
ment of French claims by some secret pro-Germanism 
among their politicians and financiers, or some jealousy 
of France. Briand, the Prime Minister, had to get 
ready or go. Unless he could give the Chamber a 

178 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

definite guaranty that Germany would at last be pre- 
sented with her bill and forced to pay, he would be flung 
out of office by the representatives of the people's pas- 
sion. To understand that passion, one must know the 
condition of life in France and the mentality of the 
French people. 

To say that they were suffering from "soul sickness" 
is but a mild way of describing their disillusionment 
and disgust with the effects of victory. In their polit- 
ical activities as well as in their private life they showed 
an intense irritation with the state of affairs, and a 
sense of fear which had followed the intoxication of 
victory, a tendency to quarrel with those who were 
their friends and allies — because they thought that 
they who won the greatest share of victory had gained 
least of all from peace — and a desperate endeavor to 
grasp by any force in their power the fulfillment of their 
most fantastic hopes. 

Truly the working classes and professional middle 
class of France — the latter especially — had been mocked 
by that phrase, "the fruits of victory." It had been a 
dead-sea fruit, bitter to the taste. The price of food- 
stuffs and all necessities of life were at least five times 
higher than at prewar rates. The clerk, the journalist, 
the salesman in a small shop, that vast multitude of 
men who in a civilized community have to eke out a 
respectable livelihood on fixed salaries, that do not 
depend on manual labor or provide opportunities of 
profit by commercial prosperity, found themselves 
pinched to the point of sharp distress. 

Certain articles of food and living had risen in price 
like rockets, in Paris and other cities. Mutton, for 
instance, was fifteen and seventeen francs; ham, sixteen 
to eighteen francs a pound. A suit of clothes which 
cost a hundred francs in 19 14 was not to be had from 
any tailor in 1921 for less than seven hundred francs. 

179 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

As I have said, the middle classes, and especially the 
clerical classes, had suffered most. In some cases their 
salaries had been tripled, but this increase was not in 
proportion to that of the laboring classes. A workman, 
for instance, earning six francs a day before the war, 
might now get thirty francs, or even more. A ticket 
collector on an omnibus got a much higher wage than a 
school-teacher. But these wages were all in excess of 
the possibilities of national economy, and were not 
justified by the production of labor, so that unem- 
ployment was bound to ensue, or the downfall of indus- 
trial enterprise. 

In France, as in most other countries of Europe, 
exasperation at high prices was inflamed by the convic- 
tion that some part of them, at least, was due to the 
profiteering of unscrupulous traders, utterly callous 
of the common people, and supported in a sinister way 
by corrupt influences in the government, sympathiz- 
ing with the old claims of a selfish capitalism in- 
trenched against the growing menace of revolutionary 
labor. I heard strange stories of immense stores of 
vegetables left to rot in warehouses while the prices 
soared to fantastic heights in the Paris markets; of 
great quantities of meat going bad in the storage houses, 
while small families were starved of meat. The peasant 
was profiteering at the expense of the townsman, the 
manufacturer was profiteering at the expense of the 
peasant, and the government was juggling with the 
figures of bankruptcy, by issuing paper money which 
had no reality. There was truth in all these things, 
and it did not make for economic recovery or health. 



in 

The magic word "reconstruction" did not have much 
power over the bodies and souls of those French peas- 

180 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

ants and villagers who returned to the long, broad belt 
of country which stretches across France like an open 
wound. A year after the war had finished I went back 
to that country to see new life where for more than four 
years I had seen a lot of death, and the reravaging of 
earth already ravaged by every kind of explosive gas 
force and poisonous gas. Nothing much had altered 
except that grass grew rankly on ground which was 
bare and barren when the guns had done with it. Many 
of the old trenches had silted in, and the shell holes 
which used to be six or eight feet deep were now filled up 
by the effect of rain, and the cemeteries — those little 
forests of our dead — were more neatly kept. In the 
general landscape there was not much difference, 
though as I looked closer I saw that the peasants had 
actually reclaimed many of these acres, especially 
around Peronne and south of the Somme, by digging 
out the chunks of steel that lay thick in the soil and 
searching for unexploded shells with a care that did not 
prevent many deaths. They had plowed the land, 
and furrowed it, and sowed some kind of crop, and their 
industry had gone on since then with untiring spirit, 
so that now a broader stretch of country is under 
cultivation. 

I found little colonies of wooden huts, like the en- 
campments of nomad folk, constructed at places like 
Passchendaele and Langemarck and Gheluvelt, where 
men of ours lived in dirty ditches from which they rose 
on days of battle to cross through a storm of fire, in 
which many fell, a score of yards or so, to where the 
enemy waited with machine guns, bombs, and trench 
mortars. In these wooden huts live the repatriated 
peasants who fled from the red tide of war, and I talked 
with many of them and heard the truth that was in 
them, and the passion, and the despair. 

The point of view as expressed by those people who 

181 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

had suffered and were suffering from the outrage of 
war is different from what one would hear from great 
people, and closer to the truth of life as it is seen in 
peasants' cottages and middle-class homes. 

We know what the great people think, or, at least, 
say. I am sure M. Poincare would have nothing new 
to tell me, if I sought the honor of an interview with 
him. Even M. Briand would only utter large generali- 
ties on the subject of future liberty, justice, and progress, 
and the necessity of maintaining the Entente Cordiale. 

From old people in wooden huts on the edge of desert 
lands, from drivers of hired motor cars, from visitors 
who were soldiers, from little groups of people sitting 
round wooden tables in wayside inns, and from business 
men trying to "reconstruct" that which had been 
destroyed, I studied the popular psychology of France 
after the war, and found it interesting. 

These people were great realists. They faced facts 
squarely and did not camouflage them by fanciful 
hopes or rose-colored romance. 

Not even victory, and its pageantry, covered up by 
one grain of dust their realization of the immense 
horror of war and of its price in blood and ruin. 

Military glory had no meaning to them except in stern 
duty and the endurance of abominable things which 
had to be endured. 

It was a waiter who expressed a kind of rebuke to me 
one night, when he had been explaining the difference 
between a bronze star and a silver star and a palm on a 
military decoration. The first is for an act of valor 
"cited" to his regiment; the second "cited" (in the 
orders of the day) to the division; the third to the 
whole army throughout France. 

He had the palm, and I said, " Magnifique, qa!" 

He turned away for a moment with a queer, contemp- 
tuous grimace. 

182 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

"Magnificent! Bah! ... It is a reward for dirty 
work. Up to your knees in mud. Dead bodies every- 
where. Stench, blood, fear, abomination. ... It is 
better to be here, serving coffee and beer, and adding 
up little figures. It is a better job." 

This man, and others like him, look back to the years 
of war with disgust, and not as a jolly adventure with 
good comradeship and good fun between the ugly hours, 
like some of our men. They did what they did because 
it was necessary to save France, but they hated it all. 

And now they face the present and the future with, 
mostly, an unflinching sense of truth. Even those 
who have hope in the future, because of their own 
strength of character, do not disguise from themselves 
the slow rate of progress by which it will be possible to 
clear away all this ruin about them and rebuild. 

"Twenty years," "thirty years," were the figures 
given by people in the devastated regions for the resur- 
rection of their villages and farms. 

They shrugged their shoulders at the word "recon- 
struction," used as a watchword by the newspapers 
and politicians, and said: "That is a fine phrase! . . . 
Meanwhile we have no material, no indemnities for our 
loss, no means of getting labor. The government 
does nothing. Perhaps it is powerless to do anything 
because of our drain of blood, this great devastation, 
and the poverty of all but the profiteers." 

I had a strange little meal in a wooden shanty on the 
Somme battlefields, with a soldier, a farmer, and a 
commercial traveler. 

In the next room was a wedding feast, and we were 
given what was left over, between each course, served 
by the wife of an English sergeant who had settled 
down in France after the war. We had to wait long, 
and filled up the gaps by conversation. 

It was the commercial traveler who talked most, 

183 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

and as he came from Paris, talked well, with a cynical 
sense of humor, beneath which lay a real sadness, as 
of a man who sees a glory that has passed. 

After the usual ribaldries about the bride and bride- 
groom in the next room, he spoke of the conditions of 
Prance, and the coming elections, and the psychology 
of French men and women after the war. 

"The war," he said, "has finished France as a great 
Power. We are going downstairs." 

"We won the war," said the young farmer. "We 
climbed up to victory, in spite of the power of Germany." 

"We had people on each side, pushing us up," said 
the commercial traveler. He enumerated the crowds 
that had propped up France — "English, Scots, Irish, 
Australians, Canadians, Americans, black men, yellow 
men, and chocolate men. 

"As a nation we are going downstairs. We have 
had our last fling — and we have flung the best of our life 
into the pool. Our population, what is it? 

"Fortunately there are still marriages — I drink to 
the health of the bride next door! but we are dwindling 
down, and always Germany is producing fat boys. 
Financially, too, we are down. We are beggars of the 
United States." 

"And England," said the soldier, who listened more 
than he talked, "will gobble us up little by little." 

"That's true," said the commercial traveler. 

"How's that?" I asked. 

The soldier hestitated. Then he said: "We are speak- 
ing frankly. England is a great country, logical, 
businesslike. Our weakness will be her advantage. 
She will capture our markets. She will enlarge her 
empire at our expense. Even now she l^:rudges us 
byna. 

His mind had been affected by the campaign of 
propaganda which was being developed not only in 

184 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

the Paris papers, but in every local sheet in France, on 
the question of Syria and the "devotion of France to 
the self-determination of the Egyptian people." We 
were accused of hypocrisy for our policy in Egypt, and 
it was not good reading. 

The commercial traveler began to talk about the 
elections. 

"They are all faked," he said. "The French people 
do not govern themselves. They are governed by a 
swarm of professional politicians, who control the 
whole machine of bureaucracy, which is spread like a 
network over the whole of France — by swarms of little 
paid officials, who do nothing but draw their salaries. 

"It has been like that before the war, and will be so 
after the war. 

"A new party will come into power with fine words in 
its mouth. Do you think they will bring water to these 
devastated regions or build up destroyed villages? 
Oh, monsieur, you are an optimist!" 

I found everywhere this contempt for politicians. 
France shrugs its shoulders at them all, and says: "It 
is a game! It has no reality." 

They pin their faith to local initiative, individual 
energy, to build up on the ruins, yet are aghast at the 
enormity of the task. 

Most of the individuals I met had suffered the loss 
of all their prewar possessions. 

The driver of a motor car owned his own garage before 
the war. The government requisitioned his cars, sold 
them afterward for double the price he had given, 
but as yet he has recovered no indemnity, and is now a 
hired chauffeur. 

The old woman who kept an inn on the Menin Road 

fled from it when the German shells came near, and 

was now back in a wooden shack. On the wall was a 

larger poster setting forth the claims for damage which 

13 1 85 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

must be made to the government before a certain date. 
She had made them months ago, but had not touched 
a penny. 

So it was in millions of cases, and there was exaspera^ 
tion, just or unjust, I know not, because there was no 
repayment out of the national treasury for losses in-* 
curred by the acts of war. 

The lack of labor in France is serious, and made 
worse by the constant strikes for higher wages and by 
the high scale of wages now demanded by men who are 
not much inclined to work with their old industry, 
whatever their reward. They will work a little bit, 
and then take a holiday and enjoy themselves. They 
were in the mud of the war. They lived in trenches. 
They were surrounded with death. They escaped. 
. . . Shall they not enjoy life now, like the profiteers 
who did nothing but get rich? 

So after the armistice the cafes were crowded. There 
were throngs outside the cinemas. In Lille, where 
conditions were very bad, they were not so bad that 
they stopped the fun of the fair or failed to crowd the 
circus where French clowns caused shouts of laughter, 
and strong men did prodigious feats, and Japanese 
wrestlers defied the laws of anatomy. 

In a great tent there were four thousand people at 
least, under the glare of lights. I looked at their faces, 
intense, gaping, laughing at comic antics. They were 
soldiers and ex-soldiers with their wives and sweethearts. 
Every man there and every woman knew the tragedy 
of the war in their souls. They had been prisoners, 
many of them. They went through years of hell. 
Now they were shouting and screaming with laughter. It 
was their need in life. They must have laughter, light, 
shows, pleasure. They had come out of the darkness. 
Not even work must interfere too much with their vital 
need, which, in this afterwar psychology, was amusement. 

1 86 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

But as one man told me, and I believed him, "if the 
people do not laugh they must weep, for truly victory 
has not brought much joy, but only a peace which is 
full of danger and a knowledge of a ruin which can only 
be repaired after many generations." 

Cardinal Mercier's words that "Germany is already 
preparing a war of revenge which may come in fifteen 
years," struck a chill in the hearts of many people who 
read these words in local papers. 

It is a terrifying idea — another war. 

French peasants and the bourgeoisie regret that 
they could not crush Germany more. If only they had 
gone to Berlin! 

The idea that there may be any comradeship of democ- 
racy between French workers and German workers, so 
preventing another war, is held only by international 
Socialists of the old type, who have many new adherents, 
but do not represent the majority of the working classes 
in France. 

Many of them regard that as an illusion, and some 
of them as a treachery. 

They shrug their shoulders at a gospel of brotherhood, 
and say "the Boche is a bandit, an assassin." 

For England there is, in the north, where our troops 
were known and where they fought, a friendly and 
affectionate remembrance. 

"Nous avons un bon souvenir des soldats anglais/' 
iaid an old peasant woman who had served many of 
them behind the lines, and such words were spoken by 
many others. 

But that does not prevent a growing suspicion in the 
minds of many French people that England has got 
"all the fat," as they say, out of the peace terms, and 
that she has waxed fat herself out of the war. 

It was no use telling them that we were spending two 
millions a day more than our income. 

187 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

They say: "England is rich. England is enlarging 
her empire. England and America are masters of the 
world." 

IV 

For some time there was, beneath the loud expression 
of joy in France because the victory was hers, a secret 
and sinister bitterness of revolutionary passion. Re- 
member that when war broke out in 19 14 the followers 
of Jean Jaures, the Socialist leader, who was murdered 
on the first day (his murderer was acquitted at the end 
of the war), rallied to the flag of France with exalted 
patriotism. They said: "We are the enemies of war, 
but this was forced on us. This is the war to end war. 
By killing German militarism we shall destroy our own, 
for there will be no need of it. By defeating German 
tyranny we shall gain greater liberty ourselves. There 
will be a 'sacred union' of classes, and labor, which 
will save France, by its body and by its soul, shall get 
greater reward. Capitalism of the old evil kind will 
be dethroned, and capital and labor shall go hand in 
hand, not as enemies, but as friends and partners." 

Over and over again I heard French soldiers say those 
things in the early days when all France was stirred by 
passionate enthusiasm and the spirit of sacrifice. . . . 
They left off* saying them when the war settled down 
into trenches, when slaughter was piled up month after 
month, when it seemed unending, and when the polius, 
in those wet ditches, thought back to Paris, where the 
politicians and the rich seemed to be quite comfortable, 
making lots of money out of army contracts, and ready 
to go on fighting — by proxy — for years and years. 
What bitterness, what suspicion, what hatred of poli- 
ticians and profiteers, was in the hearts of the French 
fighting men may be read in the books of Henri Bar- 
busse; and I, myself, talking to those polius, in their 

188 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

trenches and dugouts and in ruined villages behind 
the line, have heard all that passion of resentment. It 
seemed to these men — and seems to some of them now 
■ — that Jean Jaures, their old leader, was right, after 
all, when he said that modern warfare was made to 
bolster up one set of capitalists against another set 
whose markets they coveted, or whose power they 
feared, and that the peoples who fought and died were 
not fighting altogether for their own liberties or for 
their own reward. After the war, when the French 
troops were demobilized and came back to the little 
homes, stinted of the barest necessities of life because of 
the rising prices, while French society of the well-to-do 
classes rioted in a mad kind of luxury during the peace 
negotiations, these men became even more bitter, and 
their spirit was menacing. 

I went, one night in Paris, to a meeting of a society 
called Clarte. It was founded by the friends of that 
French author, Henri Barbusse, whose book, he Feu, 
gives the most realistic and dreadful picture of the ag- 
onies and horrors of modern warfare, and contains the 
fiercest accusation of the evil elements in civilization 
which led up to the European war. Clarte means 
clearness — clarity — and the idea of the society is to 
bring together numbers of young men in France and 
other countries who went through the war and who are 
able to think clearly on the problems of life, the struc- 
ture of society, and the means by which liberty, brother- 
hood, and peace may prevail over injustice, hatred, and 
the spirit of war. It was a night in August when I 
went to a back street in Paris and the rooms in which 
this meeting was being held. The rooms were so 
crowded that I could hardly push my way in, and so 
hot that one woman fainted, and sweat poured down 
the foreheads of French soldiers, and the whole company 
looked half stifled. It was a queer company, made up 

189 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

of many types and classes of men and women. Keeping 
the door was a handsome young officer in the sky-blue 
uniform of the Chasseurs, wearing many medals for 
valor and service. Here and there were other officers 
and private soldiers in uniform, some of them scarred 
or maimed, and one of them blinded. Those were 
the best types in the room. Others were clearly of 
foreign origin, including many Jews and Slavs, with 
rather sinister faces of a kind I have often seen in 
revolutionary gatherings in London and other capitals 
of Europe. With them were young women with black 
eyes staring moodily out of dead-white faces, and young 
men with long, uncombed hair and neurasthenic eyes, 
roving restlessly, and sullen in their gaze. On a small 
wooden platform sat the secretary of the society, a young 
man also, smartly dressed, dapper, like a clerk in a bank, 
and with the sharp, self-confident manner of a com- 
mercial traveler. He explained the objects of the 
society and the progress he had to report. 

Standing there at the back of the room, with my collar 
going limp in the heat, and the hot breath of the people 
about me making me feel sick and faint, I listened to 
the program of Clarte for the reformation of life. It 
was nothing more nor less than the Bolshevism of Lenin 
translated into French. It advocated the abolition of 
private property, the ruthless destruction of capitalism, 
the control by the laboring masses of all the sources 
and machinery of wealth, the promotion of an inter- 
national fellowship among the workers of the world. 
Old stuff, the revolutionary "dope," the old class hatred, 
and the old call to violence. The company listened to it 
in silence except for the noise of their breathing. I 
watched the faces of the young French soldiers, to 
whom all this dangerous philosophy was new, perhaps, 
but I could not guess the effect it had upon them, nor 
read the riddle of those mask-like faces still bronzed 

190 






THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

with sun and wind as when I had seen them under steel 
helmets staring across No-Man's Land from their 
trenches and listening to the rush of shells which threat- 
ened them with death. I thought back to bitter words 
I had heard from their lips in those days, their words 
of scorn for politicians, profiteers, corrupt society, 
luxurious women, old men who gained by the death of 
youth. Out of that bitterness, unjust very often, 
overcharged with their resentment against the fate 
which had thrust them into the ditches of death, and 
now, inflamed by the thought of a poor reward for all 
their suffering, had come this spirit of revolt, this desire 
for sweeping and violent change, expressed in the sub- 
versive gospel of Clarte. ... A dangerous crowd, yet 
not big enough in numbers, not representative enough 
of French mentality, to be any real menace to the secu- 
rity of the French government and state. 

It was the young officer in the Fouragere who explained 
to me the meaning and purpose of the Clarte movement. 

He spoke of the horrors of the war, and shrugged his 
shoulders, and said: "You know all about that. Let us 
not waste words on it. . . . Men who went through 
that business have come out changed, with new ideas. 
In the trenches they said, 'This must not happen 
again.' Then they went farther than that and said: 
'To prevent this happening again we must alter 
the relations of people with one another, and kill all the 
old ideas which led to this massacre. Society must 
start afresh, on new lines, not marked out by frontiers 
of hatred. Working people of all classes must get 
together and recognize that they have common interests, 
to get on with their work in peace, without being flung 
against one another by people on top who make wealth 
out of them, or by their own passions, obedient to 
foolish old traditions.'" 

He pointed to a few sentences in a manifesto of the 

191 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

new league: "The war has broken the mask of things. 
It has brought to light the lies, the old errors, the clever 
sophistry which made the past a long martyrdom of 
justice. Our present need is to organize social life 
according to the laws of reason. It is the Intellectuals 
who must prepare the reign of the spirit over that of 
material force." 

While the young officer talked to me I thought of 
something that had happened a long time ago, very 
close to the room in which we sat — a Feast to the Goddess 
of Reason, whose archpriest was Robespierre, after a 
Reign of Terror. Were these the same old ideas clothed 
in new phrases ? 

"The principles of a just society are simple," say 
these young men of France, though I shook my head 
and laughed when I heard that word "simple." . . . 
"All great thinkers, all great moralists, all founders of 
religion have always agreed on the principles. Reality 
is reasonable." 

I heard other "axioms" read in that crowded room 
to that strange little crowd of French "intellectuals": 

" Power ought to be common to all, as an ideal. Only 
work, manual or intellectual, ought to be paid for. 
Speculation is a crime against the crowd. Heritage 
is a theft." 

"Those who prepare for war prepare wars." 

"It is thought which has created progress. Men of 
thought must lend their life to progress." 

"Those who do nothing are the militants of the status 
quo. 

A man by my side said, "If I stay here I shall stifle, 
and I have heard these ideas before." 

He used his shoulder to push his way out, and I 
followed him. We talked together under the trees of 
a dark street where the air was fresh. Under those 
trees many young Frenchmen, through the centuries, 

192 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

have talked about idealism, brotherhood of man, social 
contracts, the reign of Reason. The man by my side 
was, I should say, a mechanic, and something in his 
deep-set eyes told me that he had been through the 
realities of war. 

"What do you think of it all?" I asked. 

He laughed, not in a mocking way, but with a kind of 
shrug in his spirit. "Comrades of mine used to talk 
like that in the trenches, until they had their heads 
blown off. . . . There is some truth in it. Society is 
all wrong, somehow. We ought to build something 
better out of the ruin of the war. But human nature, 
monsieur, is greedy, cruel, and stupid in the mass. Ideals 
are at the mercy of low passions. Look at the world 
now — after the war! I see no approach to the brother- 
hood of man. We are beginning new hatreds, pre- 
paring perhaps for new wars, worse than the last. " 

"Then you don't believe in the movement of the 
Clartc?" I asked. 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

"It is playing in a literary way with revolutionary 
ideals which are at work among the masses. They will 
write articles; they will bring out a paper; they will 
hold conferences. The police will not interfere because 
they are men of letters. . . . But it is the high price of 
food and the falsity of German pledges which will move 
the masses. The war has left us with much trouble." 

He shook hands with me and said, "American?" 

"No, English." 

He shook hands again. 

"England, too, has her troubles, like all the world." 



In spite of many currents of bitter thoughts in the 
minds of the French people, there is no spirit of revo- 

193 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

lution in France, but rather an intense emotional 
desire for stable government, good leadership, economy, 
and reconstruction which will bring back prosperity 
and peace to France. So far from desiring to abolish 
private property, the French peasant, who is his own 
proprietor, the French shopkeeper and small tradesman, 
the clerk and professional man, the large merchant and 
the manufacturer, wish to increase the safeguards of 
property, to be more fully assured of the interest on 
money invested in government bonds, and to be repaid 
for all those loans which were made to Russia before and 
during the war. Their anger, their discontent, their 
utter disgust with the effects of the peace treaty are 
due to a sense of fear that their private property is 
not safeguarded and that they will get nothing out of 
victory to repay their losses. 

All the foreign policy of France, all the irritation of 
the French people with those who were her friends, are 
due to their desperate anxiety to make their victory 
real, permanent, and profitable. France is haunted 
by the fear that her frontiers are no safer now than 
they were in 1914, in spite of all her immense sacrifice 
and losses and all her brilliant victories, and that she 
is not sure of peace itself for more than another spell 
of preparation for war. She realizes with dreadful 
misgivings that her population is declining steadily. 
In 1920 there were 220,000 more deaths than births, 
and in another twenty, thirty, or forty years the man- 
power of France will be terribly less in proportion to 
the Germans on the other side of her frontiers than it 
was in August of 1914. What if Germany recovers her 
wealth and strength? What if Germany, unrepentant 
and passionate for vengeance, allies herself with Russia, 
which has betrayed France and hates her? What if the 
German peoples, now split into smaller states, with 
Austria cut off from the supplies of life, regroup them- 

194 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

selves and rearm themselves, in alliance with Russian 
Bolshevism, or a Russian autocracy that may follow 
Bolshevism? Dreadful, disturbing thoughts, that are 
in the brain of many French men and women not only 
in Ministerial chambers, but in city offices and shop 
parlors, and little rooms in apartment houses. 

As far as Germany is concerned, France is determined 
to prevent her economic recovery at all costs, by the 
strict enforcement of the peace terms, which, if carried 
out to the letter, will strip her to the bone and keep her 
poor for at least a generation. However hard she works, 
the product of her toil will be seized to repay the damage 
of war in the Allied countries. Whatever her enter- 
prise in other countries, the profits of her industrial 
genius will be taken if she does not pay to the full the 
bill which France and England, Italy and Belgium, and 
all the other countries whom she warred against have 
presented to her. If it is impossible for Germany to pay 
all those claims, or if she tries to dodge them, it is a 
sure thing that France will try to seize her future credits 
and keep her with her nose to the grindstone. If need 
be, France will seize the left bank of the Rhine, and if 
need be again, sit down in Berlin. That is the clear- 
cut, definite policy of France, coinciding with the senti- 
ment of the people with regard to the Germans, and it 
is for that reason that they are perplexed, irritated, 
even exasperated with England, Italy, and the United 
States because they seem to see a different and con- 
flicting point of view, a certain yielding weakness to 
the Germans, and actual acts of concession which 
seem to France a betrayal and a breach of friendship. 

So it is with England's agreement with Germany not to 
seize the postwar values of German enterprise abroad 
in the event of her inability to pay the entire sum of 
indemnities by the times required. France is enraged 
with that concession, which weakens her power of keep- 

195 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

ing Germany in a permanent state of poverty. She 
abominated the pressure brought to bear on her, and 
the promises she was forced to make under pressure, 
to present a bill of claims to Germany based upon the 
present immediate capacity of Germany to pay. France 
said, with a great deal of truth and justice, it is absurd 
to reduce our claims now because Germany is in a state 
of ruin. Twenty years from now, by industry, by the 
discovery of some new chemical secret, by some inven- 
tion needed by all the world, Germany may, and prob- 
ably will, be the richest country in Europe. Why, 
then, should we be in a hurry to present our bill for 
immediate payment, based upon present resources, when 
her future wealth is incalculable? 



VI 

Before the final presentation of the Bill of Costs to 
Germany, at the end of April, 192 1, there was a severe 
strain upon the friendly relations between France and 
Great Britain. 

England's view was based upon a different line of 
reasoning, which clashed with the French view in a 
fundamental way. When I say England's view I 
mean the unofficial, instinctive reasoning of the ordinary 
Englishman who looks at realities without passion and 
in a business way. He said, and still thinks, more or 
less: "This idea of keeping Germany poor for ever and 
ever, of holding her in the position of a slave state 
working for the rest of Europe, so that all the profits of 
her industry go to the payment of her debts for several 
generations, is ridiculous and unsound. In the first 
place, there will be no recovery in Europe, in an economic 
way, so long as Germany is poverty-stricken. We want 
to trade with Germany. We want to sell our goods in 
German markets. We want Germany to buy our raw 

196 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

material and send us back manufactured goods in 
exchange. Italy needs that more than we do. Italy 
is in a bad way because Austria and Germany, her best 
markets, cannot pay for her produce. The United 
States want the German markets. All the world 
is hit because central Europe is paralyzed. But, apart 
from all that, which is common sense, the French policy 
is enormously dangerous. They think that Germany 
will submit to the position of a slave state. Germany 
won't. It is not in human nature. Certainly not in 
the human nature of a people sullen with defeat, re- 
membering their strength and pride. If the pressure 
is made too severe, the punishment unbearable, Germany 
will either yield to anarchy and carry the disease of 
Bolshevism to the frontiers of France, or (which is much 
more likely) will form a close alliance with the inevitable 
autocracy of Russia under Lenin or some other, which 
will substitute a military regime for communistic the- 
ories, and then there will be another and more dreadful 
war which France will be too weak to resist. All 
civilization, as we know it, will go down, and we cannot 
afford to take that risk. We must not ask of Germany 
more than human nature will stand, and if possible we 
must make her a peaceful partner in some kind of a 
League of Nations, working with all of us for the regen- 
eration of a stricken Europe. " 

To that argument the French replied with scorn and 
laughter, dubbing it the weakness of sentimental gibber- 
ing coupled with the treachery of forgetful friends. 

The French Press, inspired by their Foreign Office, 
revealed a bellicose ardor which was deplored by that 
disillusioned, cynical, but wise old Frenchman, Anatole 
France, and a small minority of far-seeing men. Even 
some of the most radical papers, like the Rap-pel y 
clamored for the immediate occupation of the whole 
of Germany. The editor of the Democratic Nouvelle, 

197 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

another radical organ, insisted daily upon the occupa- 
tion of the Ruhr Valley. M. Maurice Barres, one of 
the most famous authors of France, was passionate in 
his desire for the left bank of the Rhine, and tried to 
win over English opinion to that policy by the most 
fantastic argument. ''It is necessary," he said, "to the 
security of England. England needs a zone of security 
on the Rhine. Let her allow us to organize it!" In 
those words he abandoned the French argument that 
the Treaty of Versailles must be kept to the letter as a 
sacred document. He also challenged the English 
view, deep seated in every English brain, I know, that 
if the French were to take over the left bank of the Rhine 
with its immense German populations, the certainty of 
another war would be complete and both France and 
England would have to spend all their remaining strength 
and all their remaining wealth, or poverty, in preparing 
for the next struggle. In the most advanced socialist 
papers of France there was a prolonged campaign of 
Anglophobia, due to this difference in policy, and the 
editor of UQLuvrej which used to be pacifist and inter- 
national, harked back to a narrow and bitter nationalism, 
allied with violent attacks upon England, whose dead 
lie thick in the fields of France. 

All this stirring up of passion and prejudice was the 
prelude to the political pressure brought to bear upon 
the British government by Aristide Briand and the 
French Foreign Office, before the final settlement of 
the German reparations. Briand, former Socialist, and 
then Prime Minister of France, found himself appointed 
as the representative of French nationalism to engage 
in an intellectual duel with Lloyd George, former 
Radical and now head of a Conservative and Imperial 
Coalition. Briand chose his weapon, which was force, 
based upon the strength of the French armies. He 
called up the class of 19 19 recruits, the lads of twenty- 

198 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

two, and moved them toward the Ruhr, ready for an 
immediate advance. Speaking in the French Chamber 
on April 12, 1 92 1, he put the case with brutal frankness 
and simplicity so that the Germans, and incidentally 
the British, might understand. "On the first of May 
Germany will find herself confronted with the state- 
ment of her obligations and how she has fulfilled them. 
We have a right to execution. The bailiff having been 
sent, the gendarmes must accompany him if the debtor 
persists in being recalcitrant. It is not a question of 
war; it is a question of pure justice." He intimated 
quite clearly that France was prepared to act alone. 
They had the arms. They were ready to use them. 

It can hardly be doubted that Briand had the mass 
of his people behind him. Press propaganda, as well as 
years of disappointment with the peace, had created a 
sense of rage. Yet there were men and women in France 
who were not pleased at the sight of their boys leaving 
the plow again and putting on uniforms. It re- 
called too sharply the dreadful days of '14. Yet most 
of them said, "Perhaps it is the only way of getting 
our rights." Paris, always most inflammable, seemed 
in a set mood for a march on the Ruhr, whether the 
Germans agreed to pay or not. To capture the great 
German factories of Essen, the coal fields, arsenals, and 
industries, and hold them to ransom, seemed to them 
the best policy and the best business. It would keep 
Germany weak and drained. It would cut off* fifteen 
million Germans from their Fatherland. It would 
provide much wealth at the expense of German labor. 
So the population talked over cafe tables. 

VII 

Meanwhile, the experts were working feverishly at 
figures, reckoning out the resources of Germany, her 

199 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

taxable capacity, the utmost burden she could bear. 
It is doubtful whether even the German experts had 
accurate figures before them. From a private source, 
well informed, I received information that all classes 
in Germany were evading internal and external taxation 
by hiding what wealth they had, transferring enormous 
sums into neutral countries, dodging income-tax re- 
turns, hoarding paper money, buying precious stones 
and objects of art of marketable value which do not 
appear in any available figures. On the other hand, 
the big German trusts, organized by Stinnes and 
other magnates, had been developing industry with 
enormous strides, and by the pooling of capital, raw 
material, and profits were paying high dividends to 
their shareholders. It was clear that the estimates 
on each side would never agree. The Paris settlement 
fixed five thousand millions as the cash value of Ger- 
many's obligations, with a twelve-per-cent levy on 
German exports. The payment spread over forty-two 
years at five per cent interest would total eleven thou- 
sand three hundred millions. The last German offer, 
represented as being the utmost they could pay, recog- 
nized a cash obligation of two thousand five hundred 
million pounds, reaching a total of ten thousand million 
pounds spread over an unstated number of years with 
interest. This last offer was transmitted to the United 
States of America with a plea of the arbitration of that 
country, the decision of which Germany pledged her- 
self to accept. It was a last desperate attempt to split 
the Allies, for if the United States had accepted this 
office and had abated the terms to Germany upon fair 
consideration, a storm of fury would have broken out 
in France which would have been dangerous to the 
peace of Europe. England's agreement with the 
United States, which would have been certain, would 
have led to the breaking of friendship with the French 

200 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

people. President Harding and his advisers saw the 
danger of this trap, the utter impossibility of acceptance, 
and they notified very quickly to Germany, after cable 
communications with the French and British govern- 
ments, that they did not regard the German offer as 
acceptable. 

Historic meetings took place between Lloyd George 
and Briand, with Marshal Foch, Count Sforza, the 
Japanese ambassador, and others in attendance. The 
experts of the Reparations Commission now fixed six 
thousand six hundred million pounds as the total 
obligation in cash value to be accepted by Germany 
not later than May ist. All the other clauses of the 
treaty respecting disarmament and the trial of war 
prisoners were to be strictly enforced. 

The differences between the two Premiers were 
mainly limited to the question of "sanctions," the form 
of pressure, and the date by which Germany was to be 
compelled to pay. Briand, with Marshal Foch at his 
right hand, insisted that on May ist the French armies 
should march into the Ruhr if Germany had not sub- 
mitted. Lloyd George held out for a period of grace. 
Instinctively and intellectually the Prime Minister of 
England shrank from the thought of the occupation 
of the Ruhr. It seemed to him a policy of extreme dan- 
ger. He did not need the private protests of a group 
of British bankers, and of Mr. Asquith, Lord Robert 
Cecil, and other statesmen (though their arguments 
enforced his own convictions) to feel profoundly that 
such an occupation would mean the "withering" of 
German industry so that the indemnity could never 
be paid, and the fatal assurance of a new war in the un- 
known but not distant future. Those arguments he 
placed before M. Briand with a certain touch of brutality 
which he can use at times with great effect, but they 
were countered by the burning resolve of Briand to 

14 20I 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

"act" alone, if need be, on behalf of France, whose 
patience was exhausted, as Cardinal Dubois wrote to 
the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne. 

Lloyd George was faced with a stupendous dilemma. 
The Germans were watching this psychological and 
historical drama, with full understanding of its sig- 
nificance, ready to take advantage of the slightest sign 
of weakening. The whole Treaty of Versailles would 
fall with a crash if the divergence of views between 
France and England widened much further or did not 
find some bridge of compromise. A compromise was 
found. Six days' grace were given to the Germans for 
unconditional acceptance. Refusing to send British 
troops into the Ruhr — "not a man and not a gun" — 
Lloyd George agreed to lend the British fleet for a block- 
ade of German ports if Germany refused to submit to 
the terms. At the same time the German ambassador 
was privately notified that if his government accepted, 
the British government would on their side uphold 
the spirit of the treaty with the strictest regard to 
German interests, as far as they were safeguarded and 
as far as our honor was pledged, especially in regard 
to Upper Silesia, coveted by the Poles with the tacit 
approval of the French. 

The German government, reconstituted under Doctor 
Wirth, accepted without reservations, and of all men in 
the world, Lloyd George must have breathed a sigh of 
thankfulness. He made no secret of his dread of the 
threatened seizure of the Ruhr by France. He did not 
believe it possible that German workmen could be per- 
suaded to serve their factories with enthusiastic indus- 
try under the stimulus of foreign control by foreign 
bayonets. He made no disguise of his conviction that 
the economic recovery of Europe depends a great deal 
on whether the German workmen will continue to 

202 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

work. And he foresaw the time when Germany, in 
adiance with Russia, would inevitably declare a war 
of vengeance if she were pressed to the limit of human 
patience. 

Those views, held by the Prime Minister at least for a 
few days — though God alone could tell how quickly he 
would shift his ground or what undercurrents of polit- 
ical or other interests had impelled him in that direc- 
tion — did, I think, represent the average opinion of the 
British people. They wished a fair deal to be given to 
Germany, if she agreed to pay up and made honest 
efforts to do so. They were afraid of an entry into the 
Ruhr, believing that it would guarantee a future war — 
and the idea of a future war was to them sickening and 
horrible and insane. 

Aristide Briand departed from England in a state 
of gloomy exaltation. To the photographers on board 
his ship he said that nothing would give him greater 
pleasure than to see a film showing the British fleet 
steaming into Hamburg. It was the blurting out of 
his secret hope that the Germans would not accept, 
and that the "sanctions" would have to be applied. 
The fire eaters in France, and the passion of light-headed 
people, were disappointed by the German acceptance. 
It was received coldly, without thankfulness or enthu- 
siasm. They disbelieved in the German promises to 
pay more than the first installments. It is certain 
that many of them disbelieved the German power to 
pay. What they wanted was the forcible possession of 
German industry and means of wealth, which they would 
ransom and then ruin as — do not let us forget that — 
Germany had ransomed and ruined the industry of 
Lille and other French cities in the time of war. There 
was hardly a Frenchman who could see that the ruin 
of German industry would mean the final downfall 
of the European trading system upon which all our 

203 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

hope of recovered prosperity depends. France felt 
thwarted by her friends. 



VIII 

The attitude of France toward Russia had been 
another cause of ill will and distress in French mentality. 
Russia's desertion of the Allied cause when revolution 
broke out and led to the peace of Brest-Litovsk was a 
frightful blow to France and to all of us. In the French 
mind there was no allowance made for the immense, 
bloody, and futile sacrifices of Russian soldiers, sent 
forward like sheep to the slaughter, badly equipped, 
often without arms and ammunition, against the flail 
of German machine guns and the storm of fire from 
German artillery. No allowance for the savage rage 
of the Russian masses against a corrupt, inefficient, and 
sometimes treacherous government, so that at least 
they cried out in despair and passion, "Our enemy is 
not in front of us, but behind us!" 

One reason for the intense bitterness of the French 
against the Russians is easy to understand, and of 
immense importance to the individual Frenchman. 
Years before the war the French government had backed 
the issue of Russian bonds and had encouraged its 
people to subscribe to them. Every little shopkeeper, 
every bourgeois with a sum of money to invest, had 
bought Russian stock, which was the price and pledge 
of Russian military aid in the event of war with Germany. 
Now, with the Russian plunge into Bolshevism, all that 
money was jeopardized and probably irrecoverable. 
The thought worked like madness in the brains of the 
French middle classes. It dictated the policy of the 
French Foreign Office and French War Office, who 
supported every counter-revolutionary general, pro- 
viding him with arms, ammunition, and money, in the 

204 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

hope that the Lenin regime would be overthrown by a 
new dictator who would redeem the Russian bonds. 
Kolchak, Denikin, Wrangel in turn became the hope 
of France, and their successive disasters fell like icy 
waters on the spirit of the French people. 

Yet it is profoundly significant that the soldiers of 
France, the men who had come out tired and resentful 
from the Great War, exhausted morally and mentally, 
would not engage themselves in any adventure on behalf 
of Russia which would lead to renewed fighting on their 
part. At the mere rumor that some of them were 
going to be sent to Russia, two regiments broke into 
something like mutiny. French policy was therefore 
directed to the urging on of other peoples against the 
Russian Bolsheviki and ardently encouraged Poland in 
her " offensive-defensive " warfare, which, after many 
setbacks and a retreat which looked like final disaster, 
rallied under French generalship and certainly inflicted 
on Trotzky's Red armies the most damaging defeat 
they had ever suffered. France would have no peace 
with Red Russia, and, though Europe was suffering 
hunger and dearth in many countries for lack of Russian 
trade and grain, France resented with exceeding wrath 
certain tentative proposals by England and the United 
States to arrange a commercial and political peace with 
the Russian people for the sake of the world's health 
and reconstruction, with the ulterior motive of over- 
throwing the Bolshevik devil by letting in the light to 
the victims of its bloody rule. 

France has no faith in a League of Nations. Cle- 
menceau shrugged his shoulders at the idea of it, and 
yielded to President Wilson's dream for the sake of 
practical support in the other items of the peace treaty. 
The French people will not admit their German enemies 
to any society of nations on terms of equality, and do 
not see any kind of guaranty in such a league for their 

205 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

frontiers and their national safety. The present rulers 
of France, men of ardent patriotism, not looking to any 
advance in the ideas of civilization, having no faith in 
the virtues of human nature to resist the call of venge- 
ance and of greed, take the old cynical view of the 
European jungle, and rely upon the old philosophy of 
alliances, groups united in self-interest, buffer states 
between them and their hereditary foes, which made up 
the old policy of the balance of power. 

So with Belgium, with Poland, with the aristocratic 
party in Hungary, with the small states formed out of 
the slaughter of the Austrian Empire, France has es- 
tablished secret understandings, military and economic 
and political, which will safeguard her, she hopes, against 
the menace of that time when Germany may have 
recovered enough to be dangerous again — though by all 
efforts of France that time will be far postponed. It is 
a logical, a clear-cut, in many ways a justified policy. 
The only argument against it is that it harks back to 
the state of national rivalry, suspicion, diplomatic 
jugglings, military engagements and burdens, which 
cast a black spell over Europe before the late war; arid 
that it is a preparation for a renewed conflict at some 
future time, when this new balance of power will be 
tested in the scales of fate, and Europe again will be 
drenched in the blood of warring nations. In defense 
of this policy the French people, who believed that the 
last conflict was a war to end war, that the killing of 
German militarism was to be the relief from their own 
burden of military service, will have to maintain a great 
standing army, and — in their present poverty — will have 
to find somehow money enough to pay for it, with its 
desperate struggle to keep ahead of all other military 
powers in efficiency and the invention of the machinery 
of slaughter. And the mothers of babes just born will 
know, as they rock them in their cradles, that they, 

206 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

like their fathers, will one day be sent forward into the 
fires of hell to be torn to bits by flying steel, to be choked 
with poison gas, to be blinded, maimed, maddened, 
or killed. Is it for that reason that just now there are not 
many mothers in France, not many babies being born? 



IX 

The soul of France is not happy nor at peace. Her 
agonies are too fresh, her wounds are still unhealed, 
and the price of victory has been too great. Whether 
one goes to the chateau of the landowner, or to the 
cottage of the peasant, or to the poor rooms of city 
needlewomen and workers, one is confronted instantly, 
four times out of five, with the ghost of some dead 
boy or man who haunts the living. 

In the little wooden shanties which have been built 
up on the old battlefields I spoke, as I have told, to 
French people who have come back again. Several of 
them told me that their gladness was spoiled by the 
thought of the sons who would never help them in the 
fields again, or come tramping into the kitchen, or work 
for them in their old age. 

One old woman said to me: "When peace came with 
its excitement which made us a little mad with joy I 
thought my son would come back. They told me he 
was killed, but I believed he would come back. Now I 
know he will not come back, and this work I do seems 
useless." 

Other women spoke like that in some such words. 

The men who have come back into these villages are 
not altogether merry. Some of them are rather sullen. 
There are quarrels between them and their women 
folk. For five years they were away from home, ex- 
cept for brief visits on leave, if they were lucky. During 
their absence their villages were the billeting places of 

207 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

English, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, Australian and 
American soldiers. There were flirtations, love affairs, 
inevitable episodes between some of their women and 
these foreign soldiers. Some women's tongues are 
sharp, some of them have long memories for things done 
by their sisters in time of war. Gossip, slander, back- 
biting, happen in moments of malice. . . . The young 
Frenchmen with sisters and sweethearts are not very 
grateful to British soldiers and others for what they did 
in the war. They are jealous, suspicious, resentful of 
the friendship they established with the women of France. 
It is an aspect, and a tragic aspect, of war psychology 
which must not be left out of account in the reaction 
which has injured the old comradeship between the 
nations who fought together. 

England has suffered most by that reaction. France 
for a time has been suspicious of England, jealous of 
her. Conscious that they lost more men in the war, 
suffered most damage — frightful and irretrievable dam- 
age to beautiful towns and churches and cathedrals 
and countrysides — and that they bore the crudest 
shocks of war, they believe that England gained most 
from the peace. They point to the widened spheres 
of the British imperial rule, in Palestine and Mesopo- 
tamia, the German colonies in Africa, and they think 
that British policy now is inspired by mere commercial 
selfishness, and that our power stands across the path 
of French interests and bars the way of France to those 
fruits of victory still unharvested from the beaten 
enemy. 



In May of 1921, not a fortnight after the German ac- 
ceptance of the Bill of Costs, there arose an international 
crisis which put a more severe strain upon the friendly 
relations between France and England. It had been 

208 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

agreed by the Supreme Council that the question as to 
the separation of Upper Silesia with its mixed population 
of Germans and Poles should be put to a plebiscite 
determining whether the whole, or part of it, should re- 
main within the German Reich or go to Poland. The 
result of this plebiscite, superintended by an Allied 
commission under the protection of French and Italian 
troops, and a body of British officers, was by six to 
four in favor of Germany, though it was still within 
the right of the Supreme Council to decide the exact 
boundary line between Germany and Poland. With- 
out waiting for that decision, Korfanty, a Polish leader, 
played the part of DAnnunzio in Fiume, aroused the 
fervor of the Polish masses, and incited them to occupy 
German districts. The French stood by without oppos- 
ing their advance. The Italians resisted, and lost a 
number of men before they retreated under overwhelm- 
ing numbers of Polish insurgents. British officers of 
the Allied mission, there to uphold international jus- 
tice, in fairness to Germany as to Poland, found them- 
selves in a powerless and humiliating position, surrounded 
by rebels against their authority whose officers they were 
compelled to salute. 

When this news reached England, Lloyd George 
waited a little while and then gave tongue. He spoke 
raspingly, with something like violence, and the words 
had an ugly sound in the ears of France. In his first 
statement he did not mention France by more than a 
passing reference, but inveighed against Poland, the 
ally and foster-child of France, with very bitter words. 
The hardest thing he said was that her part in the war 
had been divided between those who fought by the side 
of Russia and broke when Russia broke, and those who 
fought to the end on the side of Germany against 
French and British troops. She owed her nationality 
to the Allies, and it was her duty to respect the Treaty 

209 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

of Versailles which had created her as a nation. He 
made it plain that he would not tolerate this invasion 
of Silesia, and suggested that German troops might be 
given the authority to repel it. 

A storm of protest and hostile comment arose the 
next morning in the French Press. Lloyd George was 
warned that his words were "dangerous," that France 
would not tolerate such insults to her ally, and that 
they revealed something like a pro-German spirit. 
Aristide Briand, the Prime Minister, accepted the fact 
that the Treaty of Versailles must be respected in 
Silesia as elsewhere, but warned Germany that any 
military adventure against the Polish insurgents would 
be regarded as an act of war by France. A few days 
passed, and it seemed as though the French Press had 
received orders to pour oil on the troubled waters. 
They made certain half-hearted apologies for the heat 
of their language and said that Mr. Lloyd George's 
statement had been inaccurately reported. There had 
been a "misunderstanding." But Lloyd George was 
resolved that there should be no misunderstanding of 
his views. On the evening of May 17th he issued another 
statement, more vigorous than the first, more provoc- 
ative of French sentiment, not unjustified but challeng- 
ing. To their Press he addressed severe and warning 
words: "In all respect, I would say to the French Press 
that their habit of treating every expression of Allied 
opinion which does not coincide with their own as im- 
pertinence, is fraught with mischief. That attitude 
of mind, if persisted in, will be fatal to any entente." 
In addition he used certain words which seemed to have 
a sinister meaning, suggestive of a new grouping of 
Powers in which France might be isolated from the 
friendship of Great Britain. 

"The course of the world in coming years cannot be 
forecast. The mists ahead are more than usually 

210 



THE PRICE OF VICTORY IN FRANCE 

dense. Much will depend on the Allies holding together. 
Apart from the treaty obligations, events which can- 
not be foreseen must determine the future groupings 
of nations, and the future of the world, especially of Europe, 
will be determined by old or new friendships." 

That last sentence, if it had any meaning, and it was 
not uttered lightly, could have only one meaning, and 
that the warning that the Anglo-French entente might 
be broken in favor of an Anglo-German entente. As 
such it was taken by the French people, and it came to 
them as a blow in the face. In every newspaper in 
France this statement by the Prime Minister of England, 
following his first speech about Silesia, was regarded 
as an unfriendly, offensive, and brutal utterance, which 
they refused to accept as representative of the views of 
the English people. 

They were right in refusing to accept that. In spite 
of the annoyance of many of our people at the long 
series of rather bitter articles appearing in French 
newspapers, the thought that our friendship with France 
should actually be endangered — broken — came as a 
sharp shock. The thought was abominable, for if 
that were to happen, if in the future groupings of nations 
we should find ourselves allied to the enemies of France 
and not with them, then indeed the whole of the Great 
War had been but a grisly massacre without any spiritual 
purpose at all, and the six hundred thousand British 
dead in the fields of France had been slain for the devil's 
jest in a game of mockery. 

We must have differences with France. Our general 
attitude toward the foundations of peace in Europe 
was not the same as hers, because her peril was greater, 
her sense of unforgivable injury more poignant, her 
future more uncertain, her desire to keep Germany 
weak and poor a desperate and all-consuming passion, 
because of hideous memories and ever-present fears. 

211 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

But though we might afford to be more generous to a 
beaten enemy, and look forward to a peace based upon 
conciliation rather than upon the military supremacy 
of a new balance of power, there could be no honest 
question of abandoning France for any new allegiance. 
It would be the deepest, blackest dishonor, the viola- 
tion of all the tragic sacrifice and the most heroic memo- 
ries of that war which we have fought together. I 
remember at the beginning of the war the shouts of 
"Vive les Anglais!" when the first of our boys came 
marching through French villages; the tears of the men 
and women who thrust fruit and flowers into their 
hands; the cry of "Camarades!" ... I remember our 
troops in the villages behind the lines year after year, 
where every Tommy had friends who kissed him when 
he went off" to battle and cried when news came of his 
death. ... I remember the entry into Lille, toward 
the end of it all, when the liberated people hailed us and 
wept with joy at the sight of us. Was all that to be 
wiped out, forgotten, and disgraced by the quarrels of 
politicians and a drifting apart? Never; for while there 
are men alive in England who fought in France, they 
will remember the heroic spirit of those people, their 
long, patient suffering, their gayety even in the ditches 
of tragedy, their valor of soul. And in France they 
remember our men, the "Tommies" they admired, the 
graves they tend ctill with flowers kept fresh. 

To me, now and always, though I see the hope of the 
future with a vision impossible to many Frenchmen, the 
name of France is like an old song, and I love her people, 
her history, her beauty, with something like passion. 
I am not alone in that, and there are between France 
and England sacred ties which can only be broken if 
honor is broken, and faith is defiled, and a spiritual 
union in desperate sacrifice utterly forgotten. 



VI 

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 



IN many subtle ways, not apparent on the surface 
of things, the social spirit of England has been more 
changed in the last six years of history than in the six 
centuries preceding them. Such a statement may 
seem fantastic in exaggeration for the sake of an easy 
and arresting phrase, yet it is exactly true of certain 
characteristics of English life and habit, for the war 
was a convulsion which shook England to the core and 
broke up many of its old instincts and traditions of 
social faith. 

In spite of the modern developments of democ- 
racy and industry, the progress of education, and 
the growth of cities, England remained, until the 
World War, amazingly feudal in its structure and 
insular in its habits of thought. The old landed 
aristocracy maintained in the countryside the power 
and allegiance which they had possessed for hundreds 
of years, and the small farmers and tenantry, fast 
rooted to their soil, had no sense of change and no desire 
for change. 

In counties like Somerset and Devon, Warwick and 
Gloucester, Norfolk and Suffolk, the peasant laborer 
was, in his ways of speech and thought, but little differ- 
ent from his forefathers of Tudor and Plant agenet 
times, spoke almost the language of Chaucer, so that 
to the London man, modernized, quick witted, the 

213 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

"yokel" of the south, west, and north was incompre- 
hensible in his dialect and primitive in his outlook 
and understanding. The landed gentry, in old country 
mansions, changed the cut of their clothes, danced the 
fox-trot, adopted the latest social fashion, but instinc- 
tively, in the very fiber of their bodies, in allegiance to 
a tradition of life and to a certain plot of land which 
was theirs, were intensely insular. 

I remember a year or two before the war a startling 
instance of the conservatism of English life beyond the 
cities. It was when the craze for "pageants" had 
caught hold of English imagination, so that in many 
old towns the people dressed themselves in the costumes 
of the past, reread the history of their forefathers, and 
acted the drama of the centuries from Saxon times to 
their own present. In Norfolk there was such a pag- 
eant, and one scene of it was to represent a chapter 
of history when, five hundred years ago, the gentlemen 
of Norfolk, with their squires, came to pay homage to 
Mary Tudor, their princess. Five centuries had passed, 
but every actor in the scene bore the same name, lived 
on the same soil, held the same place, as those ancestors 
of his who had knelt before the Tudor princess. 

In a thousand ways like this England held to the 
past. The people were insular, and the sea which divided 
them from the Continent was a great water of defense 
against the spirit of change, except in outward, super- 
ficial things. 

Then the war came and changed much in the spirit 
of English people. ... At first it seemed as though 
it would be like other wars of England — a foreign 
expedition of a little professional army, and of young 
lads eager to see "foreign parts" by taking the king's 
shilling. They would fight gallantly, many would be 
killed, there would be exciting reading in the news- 
prints, and then the bells would ring for victory, the 

214 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

lads would come marching back, and English life would 
go on again, hardly touched or altered. Even at Water- 
loo there had been only twenty-five thousand English 
soldiers. To the mass of English folk the Napoleonic 
wars had been a remote and distant thing, not afFect- 
ing their own lives much. When the great World War 
broke out the British troops who were sent, according 
to the pledge with France, were called the "Expedi- 
tionary Force," as in the old days. But presently the 
Regular Army was spent, and presently all the youth 
of the nation was sent out, the younger brothers follow- 
ing the elder brothers, the married following the single 
men, fathers of families conscripted like the boys at 
school. England was all in — all her men, all her women, 
and no escape for any of them in the service of death. 
No living body in England was exempt from the menace 
of destruction. Death came out of the skies and 
chose old men and women, nursing mothers, babies, 
anyone. The enemy attacked them in little homes in 
back streets, in big factory centers, in the heart of 
London. ... So England was no longer safe in her 
island. An island people, uninvaded for a thousand 
years, with utter reliance on her fleet as an invincible 
shield, were suddenly shocked into the knowledge that 
the sea about them was no longer an impassable gult 
between them and all foreign foes. It was a shock 
which broke up the old psychology. We have not 
recovered from it yet, nor ever shall do. 

English youths went out to the death fields, hundred 
thousand after hundred thousand, until four million 
men had gone that way. From first to last on all fronts, 
the men of the English counties — not Irish nor Scots, 
nor Welsh nor Canadian nor Australian — made up 
sixty-four per cent of the British fighting forces. They 
were English soldiers who fought most, and endured 
most, and died most, because there were most of them, 

215 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

though the world heard least of them, because the 
English people don't talk most about themselves. Out 
of every four men who went out to the World War one 
did not come back again, and of those who came back 
many are maimed and blind and some are mad. England 
and the spirit and mind of England were altered by so 
great an ordeal which had come to every home and 
heart. 



ii 

In many ways the alteration was plainly visible 
during the war, especially to fighting men who came 
home from the dirty ditches on three days' leave, or 
seven. The home-staying people — the old and middle- 
aged, the workers in the factories providing the material 
and munitions of war, the government officials, clerks, 
and employers of labor, even the young girls — were 
possessed by a new energy, a more vital spirit, a restless 
and energetic excitement. They were all "out to win." 
They were all, in big ways or little, dynamic in their 
activities. Caste was for a time in abeyance, though 
not abolished. (That in England, where we are all 
snobs, from the plumber's mate and the greengrocer's 
wife to the Eton boy and the dowager duchess, would 
be expecting too much, too quickly.) University pro- 
fessors were acting as field laborers. Patrician women 
were making munitions with factory girls. A great, 
strong, spiritual wind seemed to have swept through all 
classes of English life. It had cleansed even the slums 
of great English cities which had seemed past cleansing. 

Before the war, an immense population in England 
crowded into the cities, had lived below the poverty 
line or on the thin edge of it — miserably, precariously, 
dirtily. There was a mass of floating, casual labor, 
often out of work, huddled in the hovels of back streets, 

216 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

in filthy conditions. Their children were ragged, 
barefooted, underfed. Now those conditions had been 
altered by the war. The demand for labor was so 
great that every able-bodied man could get a good 
wage. The government and the employers paid great 
wages for skilled work. Mechanics who had found 
trouble in getting forty or fifty shillings a week now 
gained two hundred or three hundred shillings a week. 
Any girl with her hair hanging down her back or tied 
into a pigtail could get a wage that her father would 
have envied before the war. Munition girls were getting 
three or four pounds a week, some of them far more than 
that. Small families, all working, paid by government 
money, raked in an incredible weekly revenue. For 
the first time they had a broad margin of money for 
the fun of life as well as for its sharp necessities. 

I remember being home on leave once during the war 
and walking in the park of a poor district of London on 
a bank holiday — when the poor people used to come out 
of their slums in their rags to enjoy a little liberty. 
This time there were no rags, but well-dressed children, 
girls overdressed in the imitation of fashionable ladies, 
a strange new look of prosperity and well-being. At 
that time the workers in factory towns had more money 
than they knew how to use, and bought absurd little 
luxuries, and grabbed at the amusements of life without 
thought of the morrow. There were pianos in the homes 
of coal heavers, and the wives of laborers wore fur 
coats — in summer as well as in winter. 

The fighting man, back from the trenches, where 
he risked death every day and every minute of every 
day for one shilling and twopence, was startled by the 
money made by the luckier men who worked for war 
at home. He saw injustice there, inequality of service 
and reward, and sometimes was bitter and blasphemous 
on the subject. But on the whole, the soldier did not 
15 217 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

begrudge the money earned by the home workers. They 
were his folks. He was glad of their luck, though he 
did not share it. He believed that when he came home — 
if he came home! — he, too, would get high wages for 
any job he might get. His wrath and the wrath of 
the home workers (in spite of their own prosperity) 
were reserved for the manufacturers and financiers who 
were making enormous profits out of government con- 
tracts — vast profits out of the massacre. 

"The profiteers," as they were called, sometimes 
fairly and sometimes unfairly, became the worst hated 
class in England as in other countries, by the masses of 
working people, and by the old gentry who gave their 
youth to war, according to old traditions and the law 
of their caste, without any reward but that of pride 
and honor. The old aristocracy saw themselves 
doomed by the uprising of the New Rich. The small 
landowner, the country squire, the nobleman of the old 
order, aloof from trade and manufactures, gave their 
wealth to the service of the state, as they gave their 
sons, and upon them fell, year by year, a heavier bur- 
den of taxation. Before the end of the war, and after 
the end of it, many of them sold their estates, which 
had been in their families for hundreds of years, sold 
also their family treasures. The New Rich took pos- 
session of many old mansions, bought the family heir- 
looms of the old regime, renovated and vulgarized old 
historic places. I know one family of the ancient order 
whose history in the war is typical of others. There 
were four sons, and all of them were in the army or the 
navy, and two of them were killed. The daughters 
became nurses and devoted themselves to the wounded 
during all the years of war. The mother died by the 
strain of war. Increasing taxation bore down heavily 
upon an already impoverished estate. The father, a 
peer whose name belongs to the great memories of Eng- 

218 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

land, sold the pictures of his ancestors to an American 
millionaire, then the treasures and relics of his house. 
It is now an empty shell, and the eldest son, back from 
the war, farms a little plot of land on the edge of the 
old park which belonged to the family since the first 
Charles was king. 

in 

A social revolution has been accomplished in England 
by this turn in the wheel of fortune. The New Poor — 
once the old gentry — are scraping along fairly well, as 
they must confess, on the remnants of former wealth; 
the New Rich possess many of their places, and so far 
have not learned those traditions of kindness, of gener- 
osity, and of noble manners which made the old gentry 
pleasant people, whatever faults they had. In a way 
previously unknown to a great extent in England, 
small traders, little manufacturers, business adven- 
turers, without capital or power, seized the chance of 
war, the needs of a government reckless of all cost 
provided the supplies of war came in, and made rapid 
progress to great prosperity. Their profits mounted 
higher and higher, and, though the government imposed 
upon them an excess-profits duty, most of them dodged 
it, in one way or another. 

From this class there has risen up a new "smart set" 
whose appearance and ways are surprising to those who 
knew England before the war and came back with 
observant eyes. They have invaded the places which 
used to be sanctuaries of the old aristocracy — Prince's 
restaurant, the Hyde Park Hotel, the royal inclosure 
at Ascot, the lawns of Ranelagh and Hurlingham, the 
river gardens of Henley. They dress loudly and talk 
loudly, in a nasal way. The young men are singularly 
lacking in good manners. They sprawl in the presence 
of their women folk. Their idea of gallantry is horse- 

219 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

play with pretty girls. They puff cigarette smoke 
into the faces of their dancing partners, and play the 
giddy goat in public places. It is they who crowd into 
public dancing rooms with girls expensively dressed but 
not expensively educated. Hour after hour they gyrate 
with the grotesque movements of the modern dance, 
cheek to cheek with their little ladies, yet singularly 
indifferent, it seems, to amorous dalliance. It is a ritual 
which they perform earnestly as part of their new duties 
in life, but as far as I have observed them, they do not 
get any real pleasure out of the exercise or out of the 
company of the girls. They pass from one partner to 
another as they would change omnibuses on the way 
to the City. The girls themselves, in this particular 
set, are a curious compound of feminine artificiality 
and tomboy simplicity. They paint their lips, wear 
hideous little frocks and openwork stockings, but they 
will drive a motor car through the thickest traffic 
without turning a hair, and box a boy's ears if his 
"cheek" gets too much on their nerves. They are 
self-possessed, bad-mannered, vulgar young people, su- 
premely indifferent to public opinion, pleased to shock 
the sensibilities of old-fashioned folk, yet not outrage- 
ous in the larger moralities. Generally, I think, they 
are able to look after themselves with perfect propriety, 
though they take risks which would horrify the ghosts 
of their grandmothers, and behave with a loose frivolity 
which would arouse the suspicions of the most charita- 
ble. Those young people are the children of those who 
did well out of the war. They have not yet acquired 
the refinements of wealth, though they have lost the 
simplicity of the class to which their parents belonged. 
Their faces, their voices, their manners betray a lowly 
origin, for heredity still has something to say, and they 
have not found a real place in English life, though they 
make so much noise and take up so much room, 

220 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

It was the middle-class man or woman that was hard- 
est hit by taxation before the ending of the war, and by 
the prices of life's necessities rising higher and higher 
every month. The laboring classes kept mostly 
beyond the pace of these rising prices by rising wages. 
Well organized and fully aware of their new importance 
as the workers for victory, they saw to it that their 
wages should always be on the upgrade and beyond 
the tide of living costs. If this did not happen, they 
went on strike, and the government yielded — every 
time. The government paid every kind of wage for 
work, though secretly it knew that there would be a 
fearful reckoning when victory was assured, if it might 
be assured, which was not always certain. But there 
were many people between the devil and the deep sea 
■ — between profiteers and organized labor. They were 
unorganized. They were living on the interest of small 
capital. They were dependent on fixed salaries or 
professional fees which could not be increased. Their 
rents were raised. The income-tax assessor had no 
mercy on them. The cost of living frightened them. 
They were reduced to a state of stinting and scraping, 
underfeeding, clinging to shabby clothes. They, more 
than any, belonged to the New Poor. . . . Then at 
last the war ended, and masses of men came back from 
the battlefields, leaving an Army of Ghosts behind them 
— their dead comrades. Then all things changed under 
the surface of English life. 



IV 

The men who came back were not the same men as 
those who had gone away. They had been utterly 
changed. They had gone out from villages in England 
where their life had been very narrow, very limited in 
ideas and speech. Many of the boys in those villages 

221 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

were as simple and unthinking as the peasants of the 
Middle Ages. From the city slums they had gone 
out in the big battalions, and the under-sized, under- 
fed, ill-aired lads of that city had been broadened and 
strengthened, well fed, well aired in an outdoor life 
that was healthy and fine when it was not deadly and 
dreadful. They had taken frightful risks as a daily 
habit, until the thought of death was not much to them. 
They had mixed and talked with men of many minds. 
They had thought strange thoughts in the silence of 
night watches with the instant menace of death about 
them. Some of them were broken in nerve. Some of 
them were brutalized and demoralized by this life of 
war. Many of them were bitter and resentful of the 
things they had had to do and suffer and see. All of 
them hated war. Most of them had come to think 
that not only the Germans were guilty of that war, 
though most guilty, but that something was wrong with 
civilization itself, with the governments of nations, 
with the old men who had sent the young men to the 
trenches because this massacre had been arranged 
or allowed. 

They were eager to get back home, and thousands 
were kept rotting in mind and body in many far places 
— as far as Mesopotamia — months after peace. When 
they came home they were not eager at first to get to 
work. They had earned, they thought, a holiday, a 
long rest. They had served England. England could 
keep them for a bit. So for many months they idled, 
played around, restlessly, never quite satisfied, not 
fitting easily again into civil life and home life — and 
the government still kept them on unemployed doles, 
piling up the national debt, printing more paper money, 
which was nothing but a promissory note on future 
industry. Prices did not fall; they rose higher. The 
profiteers, big and small, capitalist and shopkeeper, 

222 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

still demanded the same margin of profit on goods made 
and sold. The ex-soldier was exasperated by these 
prices. His government dole was not large enough to 
give him much of a margin for the fun of life. Presently 
he began to demand work. The mass of skilled hands 
found it easily enough, on the whole, and at war wages. 
But there was a great mass of unskilled labor which 
could not get work. It was very skilled labor in the 
art and craft of war. It was made up of expert machine 
gunners, experienced airmen, riflemen, bombers, trench- 
mortar experts, fellows who could use a bayonet dex- 
terously. But it was utterly unskilled in the arts and 
crafts of peace. These men had been boys when they 
were recruits. They had gone out to war straight from 
school. They had skipped apprenticeship to any trade. 
They had not even learned typewriting or clerical work. 
When they asked for jobs the trade-unions said: 

"Where is your apprenticeship ticket?" 

"I was in the army," said the unemployed man. 
"I was fighting for England and the whole damn crowd 
of stay-at-homes." 

"Sorry," said the trade-union foreman. "You were 
little heroes, no doubt, and we're much obliged to you, 
but we don't dilute skilled labor with unskilled trash. 
It's against trade-union rules." 

It was also, it seemed, against the principles of many 
employers of labor in the great cities, the managers 
of city offices. Young gentlemen who had been officers 
in the infantry or the aircraft, in the tanks or machine- 
gun corps, called upon them in search of clerkships. 
These were the loyal gentlemen who, while the young 
men were fighting and dying, said, "We will fight to 
the last man — to the bitter end." But now that the 
end had come, with victory, some of them looked 
doubtfully at the ex-officer boys who had had the luck 
to come back, and uttered disconcerting words. 

223 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

"You are hardly fitted for work in this office. You 
have been wasting your time in the army. Probably 
you have acquired habits which would not make you 
useful in this business. On the whole, we prefer boys 
just out of school or just down from the university." 

So young ex-officers after various experiences of this 
kind went away using language they had learned in 
Flanders — strong, unprintable language — with great 
bitterness in their hearts. 

On Christmas Eve last in London, while the streets 
were filled with people doing their shopping, some of 
these ex-officers — heroes of the war — stood on the 
sidewalks, turning the handles of piano-organs, appeal- 
ing to the charity of passers-by. Probably they were 
the worst and not the best of the unemployed officers, 
the scallywags, but it was not good to see them. The 
sight of them there sickened some of us who had been 
with them in the war. I know a lieutenant colonel 
who was reduced to hawking about a book from house 
to house. By an irony of fate it was a History of the 
Great War, in which he had played an honorable part. 
On the sales of the book he was to get a small commission, 
but at the end of his first week's work, when he had 
agonized with shyness and shame, afraid to ask for the 
"lady of the house" lest she should be one with whom 
he had taken tea in better days, he was fourpence down 
on his expenses. There are many men like that — some 
are friends of mine — who have never been able to get a 
decent job since the armistice. Civil life had no place 
for them, in spite of Lord Haig's constant appeals 
to the nation on their behalf. The men had a better 
chance than their officers, and until recent days the 
majority did get assimilated into the ranks of labor, 
although a minority remained unemployed, and, in 
some cases, owing to nervous debility after the shock 
of war, unemployable. 

224 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

The government was not unmindful of these men. 
Every unemployed soldier received, and still receives, 
a weekly allowance, now reduced to one pound, and this 
helps a single man to scrape along without starvation, 
but no more than that, and without any sense of good 
reward. The man who doesn't like work makes it do. 
The man who wants to work and can't receives this 
dole without gratitude — with a curse in his heart at a 
nation's ingratitude. 

Among his rivals, keeping him out of work, were the 
girls of England. During the years when manhood 
was away in masses the girls came out of their homes, 
took the places of men in many kinds of work — rough 
work as well as soft work — and did wonderfully well. 
They were happy in that work, earning good wages 
which enabled them to buy pretty frocks, to amuse 
themselves in holiday hours, to be magnificently inde- 
pendent of the stuffy little homes in which they had 
been like caged birds. English girlhood found its 
wings in the war, and flew away from the old traditions 
of inclosure to a larger liberty. 

That has been an immense social change. Apart 
from the peculiarities of the New Rich which I have 
mentioned, it has changed the manners and spirit of 
English life, and these clear-eyed girls of war-time 
England, now grown to womanhood, have nothing in 
common with the prim and timid ways of their mammas 
and grandmammas, but face life without shyness of 
fear — confident, frank, adventurous, out for fun at any 
price — which is sometimes too high and horrible. 

Since the war a new generation of youth — boys as 
well as girls — has grown up. The younger brothers 
are filling the places of the elder brothers who were in 
the fighting fields and did not come back. It is a new 
kind of youth in England, belonging to a new life strange 
to us older men. It is not touched by the shadow of 

225 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

war. It has got clear away from that. It refuses to 
be gloomy with present conditions; it is impatient of 
the tragedy that hangs over older minds. It is very 
daring in its desire to cut clean away from old traditions 
of thought and manner. It is joyous, reckless, amazingly 
thoughtless of trouble ahead. It joins the dance of 
life, eager to crowd a lot into the passing hour. The 
lessons and the memories of war do not seem to sober 
it or touch it with any gravity. 



It seems to superficial observers, even sometimes to 
men like myself, whose job it is^ to observe below the 
surface, that the English people have forgotten too 
quickly the things that happened — the men who died, 
the men who live in blindness, in madness, in hospitals 
for cripples and shell-shock cases. Many times I have 
been saddened by this thought of quick forgetfulness 
and have been startled by the apparent callousness of 
my own country after the blood sacrifice of its youth. 

England is not callous. A great proof of piety and 
remembrance and pride was given on the last anniver- 
sary of armistice, when the body of an unknown soldier 
was brought down Whitehall, past the Cenotaph, on 
the way to a grave in the Abbey. The King and his 
generals waited there to salute this body of a man 
whom no one knew except as one of those who had fallen 
in the defense of England, whom no one knew, yet 
was known in the hearts of all of us. In the night 
women came out into the streets of London to wait for 
the dawn, to be ready for the man who was their man 
— husband or lover or brother or son. Not thousands of 
women, but hundreds of thousands. Men, too, mostly 
ex-soldiers, came to welcome back a pal who had died 
out there in that great comradeship of death. To each 

226 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

woman the unknown soldier was her man; to each 
soldier his pal. There were few tears in the crowd 
when the coffin came, with an old tin hat and gas mask 
on the flag which draped it. No tears, but a wonderful 
silence and the spirit of remembrance. And when 
the coffin passed, led by the King and his generals, 
there was an endless line of folk passing by the Ceno- 
taph to lay little bunches of flowers on the pedestal of 
that empty shrine. All through the days and nights 
for a week of days and nights, never stopping, never 
speaking, a living tide flowed by, paying the homage 
of their souls to the dead, and for more than a week 
of days and nights they passed into the Abbey, to 
walk by the grave of the unknown soldier who was theirs. 
The soul of England remembers. 

But her people hide their wounds, and foreigners 
who go to England are startled to find so little trace 
of war's scars. They see the streets thronged by cheer- 
ful people, well dressed, well fed, prosperous looking. 
"England has recovered marvelously, " they say. "She 
has returned to normal. She is the same old England. " 

That is untrue. There will never be the same old 
England again. It is a new and different England. Not 
yet has the country recovered from the drains of war, 
nor paid the price of victory. 

VI 

For a long time England was the great, rich, strong 
country of the Allies. In the early years of war English 
gold, all the savings of centuries, was the Fortunatus's 
purse of other fighting nations. We supplied France, 
Italy, Russia, Greece with money and materials of 
war. They borrowed and borrowed from us. Then 
our wealth was exhausted and it was our turn to borrow, 
from a nation richer than we had been. At the present 

227 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

time we owe one thousand millions of pounds sterling 
to the American people, and I suppose one day we shall 
pay our debt, unless there is a general understanding 
to wipe out the Allied debts all round. Meanwhile 
the wealth of England is no more than the promise of 
the future as it may be fulfilled by the industry of the 
people. All the money — the paper, anyway — issued 
by the government is a promissory note on the future. 
Deeper and deeper the government is pledging the 
future in order to make present payments. The cost 
of carrying on the country is ten times more than it 
was before the war, owing to the increased cost of every- 
thing that is essential to the life and safety of the nation 
or to the ambitions and purposes of English leaders. 
After "the war to end war" the army and navy cost 
two hundred and seventy millions of pounds a year, which 
is much more than twice as much as the prewar annual 
budget for all the purposes of national life and progress. 
On our military and administrative adventure in Meso- 
potamia the government spent forty millions of pounds a 
year, until the pressure of public opinion forced it to 
curtail this cost, which served no other purpose than to 
"boost" up the oil sharks. 

The interest on our national debt is each year three 
hundred and forty-five millions of pounds, nearly three 
times as much as the prewar annual budget. To obtain 
this revenue the English folk are taxed beyond their 
patience and endurance. There is no mercy in this 
taxation. Capital is squeezed of all its profits now, 
and the profiteer is outraged by this capture of his 
wealth. But all employers and manufacturers are 
hit hard — bludgeoned — by the tax collectors. One 
man I know, a big coal owner and employer of labor, 
has to pay twelve shillings and sixpence out of every 
twenty shillings of his revenue. The middle-class 
man of small fortune pays twenty-five per cent of his 

228 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

income in taxation. At the beginning of 1921, when 
economic realities were faced for the first time, money 
was so "tight" in England that the banks refused 
further loans to commercial and industrial companies, 
and many manufacturers found it impossible to "carry 
on." They were in a tragic dilemma. The markets 
of central Europe, Russia, and Asia had collapsed. 
Those were unable to buy either manufactured goods 
or raw material on any scale sufficient to sustain the 
old prosperity of English factories. At the same time 
labor in England refused to lower its scale of wages 
to anything like the prewar level, or, indeed, at all, 
the consequence being that the cost of production re- 
mained too high for competition in any foreign markets, 
and the retail prices in England were not falling, and 
could not fall, to their old level. Capital itself was nervous 
of "cutting its losses" by wholesale reductions in prices, 
and decided to challenge the whole position of labor 
by declaring a lockout, closing down factories, and 
biding its time until the rising tide of unemployment — 
a tidal wave — brought the workingmen to their senses. 
Unless they reduced their wage claims England would 
soon be threatened with bankruptcy. 



VII 

The first round in the great struggle was fought out 
with the coal miners. They had for a long time been a 
privileged class of labor, earning high wages during 
the war, yet never satisfied, even at the time of their 
prosperity, owing to certain inequalities of conditions 
and rewards in the various coal fields. Influenced by 
local leaders, many of them men of fine character and 
brain power, and by agitators of a low, revolutionary, 
tub-thumping kind, they were deeply suspicious of the 
owners, whose profits seemed to them out of all propor- 

229 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

tion with that of labor. They could see no reason 
why men like the Duke of Northumberland or women 
like Viscountess Rhondda, by a mere accident of birth 
which put them in one cradle rather than another, 
should get royalties on all the mineral beneath their 
inherited land, without doing a hand's turn of work to 
improve the machinery or management of the mines. 
For some time the idea of nationalization appealed to 
them as the Magna Charta of the mine industry. If all 
mines were worked by the government, their inequalities 
of service and reward could be adjusted, and a greater 
common wage could be secured for the workers. This 
question was forced to the front after repeated strikes, 
especially in South Wales, the storm center, and at 
last the government under Lloyd George appointed a 
commission to inquire into the whole problem of the 
coal industry, with a pledge that they would not refuse 
the report of the majority on the commission under 
the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Sankey. After many 
sittings of a dramatic character in which ducal coal 
owners and others were subjected to keen cross-exami- 
nation by the miners' representatives, and made but 
a poor showing, as most people admitted, in defense of 
their hereditary privileges and their amazing ignorance 
of their own source of wealth, the Sankey report was 
issued and was in favor of nationalization. The min- 
ers naturally demanded the fulfillment of the govern- 
ment pledges to act upon its findings, and when a year 
passed and it became plain that the government had 
no intention whatever of doing so, the word "betrayal" 
was used from Cardiff to Newcastle by millions of men. 
From that time their confidence in the government was 
destroyed. They had "no use" for Lloyd George, who 
once had been their hero. In 1920, when the export of 
coal to foreign countries was still a source of great profit, 
owing to exorbitant rates charged to foreign countries, 

230 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

the miners tried their strength by striking for a bigger 
share of those profits. To win the favor of public 
opinion, they also demanded that fourteen shillings and 
sixpence a ton should be taken off the price to home 
consumers. They were beaten on both issues, and 
surrendered temporarily, not without anger and smol- 
dering discontent. 

Then in the spring of 192 1 the government flung a 
bombshell into the coal industry by an abrupt abandon- 
ment of "control." Throughout the war and for two 
and a half years afterward the government had 
"controlled" the industry by an arrangement with 
the owners by which they received a certain share of 
profit in return for subsidizing the cost of production 
in order to maintain the men's wages at the level agreed 
upon from time to time. It had been officially an- 
nounced that the government control would continue 
until August, but without warning the date was altered 
to March. Again the miners used the word "betrayal," 
and even some of the mine owners protested against 
the alteration. What had happened to alter the gov- 
ernment plans was a sudden icy blast of fear on the sub- 
ject of national finance. Expert advisers warned the 
Cabinet that if their policy of expenditure, at home and 
abroad, were continued much longer, the bottom would 
fall out of the Treasury. The millions of pounds spent 
on pensions, doles, and subsidies, to say nothing of 
imperial expenditure, could not be balanced by income 
from the national industry, which was showing signs of 
rapid decline. The burden of taxation on capital was 
crippling all enterprise and development. Employers 
of labor were shutting down their works on all sides, 
and our export trade suddenly "slumped" to an alarm- 
ing degree. Coal exports above all dropped with a rush 
for lack of orders. France, Italy, and other countries 
which had been forced to pay our high prices in their 

231 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

desperate need of fuel after the war, could now do 
without ours. The German deliveries were beyond 
the capacity of France to use in her own factories. 
The surplus she sold to Italy and others. American 
coal was coming cheaper to the Continent, across the 
Atlantic, than we could sell it from South Wales. The 
cost of production in our coal fields, owing to the high 
standard of wages and low standard of output, was no 
longer possible in respect of these new conditions. It 
was then that the government abandoned control and 
handed back the mines to the owners, with the sugges- 
tion that they must make the best of a bad business. 
Between mine owners, managers, and Cabinet Ministers 
there were a few whispered words, a slight deflection of 
eyelids, a nod of assent. "The men must be brought 
to heel. A drastic cut in wages! Of course they'll 
fight, but now is the time, and it's got to be done." 
It was done in the worst possible way and led to the 
gravest risk. It was the risk of civil war. 

It is hardly to be denied by honest thinkers with 
some knowledge of human passion that England was 
very near to revolution in the critical days of the coal 
crisis in the spring of 1 921. Only a few hours and a 
few men were between the challenge and the conflict. 
If ten o'clock had struck on Friday night, the 15th of 
April, without a repeal of the notices to the railway and 
transport men, there would have been, certainly, a 
class warfare leading to bloodshed and civil disorder of 
the wildest kind. 

That was not in any way because the miners and 
their allies desired revolution. But when certain forces 
are set in motion certain results are bound to happen, 
according to all laws of human experience, and those 
forces were assembling on two sides, directly hostile, 
ready for action. On the one side were millions of 
men believing honestly that there was a powerful con- 

232 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

spiracy against them on the part of the employers of 
labor and the government to force them to the accept- 
ance of wages below the level of decent livelihood and 
to smash the power of their labor organization by which 
they had obtained protection and a decent wage rate 
after centuries of struggle. On the other side was the 
government supported by the aristocracy and mid- 
die class (from whom they were recruiting a powerful 
Defense Force) believing with equal sincerity, and more 
fear, that the general strike was a revolutionary blow 
at the life of the nation, and a deliberate menace to all 
constitutional authority which must be defended by 
all available force. If that is not setting the lists for 
an ordeal by battle between two great classes then 
history is a mockery of fact. 

It is not difficult to tell what would have happened. 
I have seen strikes in England before, and in other 
countries, localized and trivial in comparison with this 
one menaced, which give me a fair idea of the larger 
scale. The members of all the trades in the Triple 
Alliance would have been divided. Many of the rail- 
way men and transport workers would have refused 
to obey the strike orders. It was for that reason that 
J. H. Thomas withdrew them. But this division among 
the men themselves would have led inevitably to passion 
and violence with the cry of "Scabs" and "Blacklegs." 
The government, with crowds of volunteers from the 
middle class and the ranks of the nonstrikers, would 
have carried out an effective service for the elementary 
necessities of national life — not more than that. This 
success would have still further embittered millions 
of men, standing idle, loafing about goods yards and 
station entrances, congregating in mobs around fire- 
eating orators, among whom would have been the 
revolutionary fanatics, the communists ready for social 
destruction at all costs, and the usual minority of young 

16 233 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

thieves and blackguards scenting loot, with itching 
fingers for other folks' property. Presently there 
would have been restlessness among the out-of-works, 
sullen boredom, then hunger. There would have been 
darkness in the great cities, the wailing of ill-fed children 
in workless homes, the excitement of women, the sense 
of fear, which is the father of cruelty. A riot, an order 
to fire, a young officer losing his head, new recruits 
shooting into unarmed mobs — what could prevent 
that sequence of events in many places often repeated ? 
Then the fury of mobs denouncing "bloody tyranny," 
"the butchery of the people," and shouting for venge- 
ance. Among the Defense Force, the "White Guards," 
as they were already called derisively by the communist 
group — there were great numbers of miners, thousands 
of laborers glad to get "back to the army again" 
because they had been out of a job, but not keen to 
kill their own class. . . . One's imagination need go on 
no farther. It might have completed the ruin of old 
England, of all Great Britain, and brought the Empire 
down. 

Now what brought England to such a possibility — ■ 
so near, so horribly near? The answer to this is the 
same as in most conflicts which risk the use of force by 
which no victory may be gained except at the price of 
ruin. Sheer stupidity and a little wickedness. It is 
clear that there was astonishing stupidity on both sides 
and something of the other. 

To take the government and the mine owners first. 
They showed an immense lack of foresight, a crass 
ignorance of ordinary psychology, in allowing the situ- 
ation to come to the crisis with a crash, by the abrupt 
decontrol of the coal industry six months earlier than 
their promise, without any system by which the decrease 
in wages could be gradually adjusted to the falling of 
prices in the cost of living, or any warning to the men. 

234 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

Did they think the miners would accept the new con- 
ditions, so paralyzing to their standard of living during 
the period of subsidized prosperity, without a desperate 
struggle which would inevitably cost the nation more 
than a transitional period of financial aid? The cost 
of the Defense Force was nearly a million pounds a 
week, out of the pockets of the taxpayers. The loss 
in coal output and trade was many millions a week — 
far more than a decreasing scale of assistance which 
would tide over the time of "slump," while wages 
were being readjusted gradually. 

And the mine owners — did they believe when they 
issued the lockout notices and flung the new scale of 
wages at the miners, with a "take it" or "leave it," 
that those men would say: "How good and kind you are, 
dear gentlemen! Of course we will work for wages 
which will reduce a million of us to the old standards of 
sweated industries, because we love our country so 
much!" The mine owners knew perfectly well that the 
men would reject this new scale utterly. They knew, 
and they have afterward admitted, under pressure, 
that the proposed wage "cuts" were excessively severe, 
unreasonable, and unacceptable, to such an extent 
that afterward they were forced to revise them sub- 
stantially in favor of the poorer classes of mine labor. 

Why this admission after the conflict had begun? 
Why not have put reasonable, instead of unreasonable, 
proposals before the miners and the public, some months 
before the lockout notices were posted, so that all 
would have had full warning and time for discussion, 
negotiation, and compromise while the pits were still 
working? It is the curse of our national life that these 
industrial troubles are conducted on lines of warfare 
between capital and labor — secret mobilizing, a sud- 
den ultimatum, wild and whirling appeals to preju- 
dice by the propaganda departments, then clearing 

235 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

for action. In this crisis the mine owners risked the 
whole life of the nation by adopting that method of 
argument, with a willful and wicked disregard of con- 
sequences. Their ultimatum to the miners was as 
provocative as the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia which 
led to the World War. It was unacceptable by self- 
respecting men, anxious for the decent living of wives 
and children. It was intended to be unacceptable — and 
that is the guilt of the mine owners, with the secret 
connivance of the government. 

The miners were equally lacking in wisdom, and, in 
one particular, criminal in their folly. They were 
right in rejecting terms which would have reduced at 
least a million of them to wages in real value below the 
line of bare necessity, wages, for instance, which in 
the case of South Wales laborers would be cut by 
forty-nine and a half per cent, reducing them to 38^. 
lid. per week, reckoned in purchasing power as ijs. 
at 19 14 prices — a slave wage. Their insanity was in 
alienating the vast majority of the nation by the threat 
to wreck the mines, their own future livelihood, and the 
industry of the country itself, by the withdrawal of 
the safety men and violent opposition to volunteers. 
It is true that the mine owners handed the lockout 
notices to the pump men as to all others, thereby asking 
for the trouble that came, but the miners should have 
made themselves guardians of their own source of life, 
according to the elementary rules of common sense and 
a quality of spirit nobler than blind passion. 

The Triple Alliance conducted its negotiations and 
its strategy with a staggering lack of discretion, and a 
recklessness of national consequence which would have 
sent us all hurtling into the gulfs of ruin but for a sudden 
confession of their own "bluff" on the edge of the chasm. 
The leaders of the railway and transport workers knew 
that they would not get the allegiance of great numbers 

236 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

of their men to the call for a general strike. They knew 
that such a strike would develop into a class warfare in 
which their own members would be divided against 
each other. . . . It is to the credit of J. H. Thomas and 
some others that in the end they forced the extremists 
to look at the stark realities of the ruin they faced in- 
stead of mouthing passionate nonsense and leading 
broken battalions to disaster. 

The cross-examination of the mine owners and of 
Frank Hodges, the miners' young leader, in a committee 
room of the House of Commons by a crowd of members, 
inspired at last by the gravity of national danger to 
act like respectable men instead of like a flock of sheep 
under the discipline of the Welsh shepherd, was one 
of the most dramatic episodes in English history, and 
did something to restore the position and independence 
of the private members which had been utterly lost. It 
revealed facts which had been concealed by the vague 
generalities of challenge and counter-challenge. It 
tore out the falsity of propaganda from the case of the 
mine owners, dragged admissions from them about 
the injustice of the new wage proposals. From Frank 
Hodges it produced the possibility of concessions from 
the points ol pride and passion, and made new negotia- 
tions possible, giving J. H. Thomas his chance of escape 
from "direct action" and the suicide of the General 
Strike. 

The second breakdown of negotiations between the 
miners, owners, and government produced a reaction 
of public sympathy against the miners, who had won 
a good deal of sympathy by the earlier presentation of 
their case. The offer of a temporary subsidy of ten 
millions of pounds from the government seemed a 
generous departure from the rigid principle they had 
laid down, and the miners' renewed insistence upon a 
national pool seemed to superficial minds, especially to 

237 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

those who have Bolshevism on the brain, the revelation 
of a sinister motive, plainly political and revolutionary 
instead of economic. 

This accusation, made as his last word in the House of 
Commons by Sir Robert Home, in his gloomy announce- 
ment of the breakdown of negotiations, was repudiated 
firmly by the miners' leaders, and it was clear to all 
who followed the arguments of Frank Hodges with 
care and understanding that his conviction was stub- 
born on the point that without some kind of a national 
pool, regulating district wages, there could be no chance 
of equality in earnings between those who worked just 
as hard in places of poorer possibilities. However much 
one might disagree with the idea of "pooling," upon 
general principles related to all industry, it was surely 
not "political" in its argument, and it was difficult 
to understand the stubborn refusal of the government 
to enter even into a discussion of the plan unless they 
were partisans, unconsciously or consciously, of the 
mine owners. 

VIII 

One thing was made clear by this disastrous conflict 
which in a few weeks inflicted enormous and irretriev- 
able damage upon the main industries of Great Britain, 
produced widespread unemployment which will not 
soon be remedied, and startled the world by a revelation 
of social strife in this country at a time when they 
were looking for our leadership in reconstruction. It 
is the urgent, desperate need of a new spirit of under- 
standing and self-sacrifice among employers and em- 
ployed for the sake of the nation itself which is drawing 
rapidly near to economic disaster. The men must be 
educated in the knowledge that British industry is so 
crippled that there must be harder work and less wages, 
or no work and no wages. The employers must be 

238 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

led to realize that they must guarantee a decent living 
wage and reduce their standards and hopes of profit 
accordingly, or lose all they have in a general bank- 
ruptcy. There is no other way out than self-sacrifice 
all round. 

But what tragedy it all has been, and is — this ma- 
neuvering for positions in a national conflict, this lack 
of candor and reason on both sides, this playing with 
fire, this refusal by the leaders of the nation, the news- 
papers and the people, to look truth in the face, and to 
understand the real causes and conditions of our present 
state! We are still playing the fool with facts, concen- 
trating on quack remedies for minor ailments, while 
we are stricken by a disease which can only be cured by 
a combined national policy based upon understanding 
of larger issues, enormous courage, general sacrifice, 
and spiritual magnanimity. 

What is now the character and temper of British 
labor? Upon that answer depends not only the 
future of England, and of the British Empire, but to 
a great extent the future of white civilization in Europe. 
For England is still the rock upon which the European 
nations largely cling for safety — a moral as well as a 
material rock. If England were to go the way of 
revolution, or fall into chaos and anarchy, it is my 
firm conviction that there would be no hope at all for 
Europe, which would fall rapidly itself into decay and 
despair. France cannot save herself without English 
help; Italy cannot; there would be no indemnities from 
Germany. Russian Bolshevism would find open gates; 
the Mohammedan powers would sweep down upon 
defenseless minorities; the moral structure of Europe 
would collapse. All that is certain, beyond all arguments 
or dispute. What, then, is the character and temper 
of English labor? 

It is truculent, aggressive, and, in minorities here and 

239 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

there, revolutionary. The actual labor leaders, men 
like Thomas, G. N. Barnes, Clynes, Lansbury, and 
others, are more moderate than the rank and file be- 
hind them. Thomas especially is a man of statesmanlike 
views, much education and experience, who has no desire 
to become a revolutionary figure or to work the machine 
of labor organization by violent and shattering con- 
flict. Behind the moderate leaders, however, there 
is a strong pressure of younger and more reckless men 
who are eager to use the power of the trade-union for 
political as well as economic purposes — which is a new 
claim as far as English labor is concerned. Several 
times they have tried their strength in this way, with 
doubtful results, because it is contrary to the instincts 
of the great body of middle-class folk who still repre- 
sent the deciding factor in English life. The attempt 
of the coal miners to dictate the policy of the govern- 
ment beyond the arbitrament of wages, to regulate 
prices to the consumer, failed quickly and resulted in 
surrender. But there was recently another action 
on the part of organized labor which proved the politi- 
cal power of their organization when supported by the 
general conviction of the country. It was when there 
was a rumor, not unsupported by evidence, that the 
government proposed to raise a military expedition for 
the attempted overthrow of the Soviet regime in Russia, 
in defense of Poland. This was more than mere popular 
rumor. It was sufficiently grave to cause a leading 
article in the London Times announcing that England 
was as near to a new great war, calling upon all the 
strength and sacrifice of the people, as in 1914. The 
trade-unions set up overnight a central committee 
which they called a Council of Action, and sent word 
to the government that the whole power of organized 
labor in England would be used to prevent any such 
war. The government replied that they had no inten- 

240 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

tion of preparing a new military expedition. ... It 
did not take place. 

All this is undoubtedly revolutionary in its spirit. It 
is a new phase of the labor movement in England, 
which up to recent years was entirely limited to the 
economic conditions of industrial life. It is stoked up 
and inflamed by the outpost leaders of Bolshevism who 
have established themselves strongly in Glasgow, Liver- 
pool, and Wales. They are out for destruction. They 
want to smash all the structure of English government, 
ali order, all law. They are in direct touch with Russian 
and other foreign communists, and they do not shrink 
from the thought of the same methods and the same 
results as those in the Russian upheaval. Lately, 
however, the communist theory has been discredited 
and largely abandoned by the mass of English workers, 
many of whom, for a time, were inclined to believe 
that this was the new and true gospel of democratic 
progress. The visits of English labor leaders to Russia, 
and their unanimous condemnation of the Bolshevik 
autocracy and the slave state of the Russian workers, 
undeceived the majority even of the younger hotheads. 
But although the philosophy of communism has been 
dropped like a sharp-edged weapon cutting the hand 
that held it, there is still a vague, loose, and dangerous 
current of revolutionary impulse in English labor ranks, 
not less menacing because undecided in its purpose. 

The successive waves of unemployment which many 
of the workers believe to be deliberately engineered by 
employers in order to keep down prices are intensifying 
the spirit of revolt and of challenge to the present order 
of things. This spirit is patronized, rather flattered, 
by a number of the younger intellectuals, who play 
about with the idea of revolution as children with fire, 
not knowing that they will be burned up if the red 
embers jump out of the grate. 

241 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

It is certain that the actions of the Coalition govern- 
ment since the war have created a sense of exasperation 
and distrust in the minds of the people, and at the pres- 
ent time there is a wide, unbridgeable gulf between that 
government and the spirit and ideals of the nation as 
a whole. The capitalist as well as the workingman is 
aghast at the reckless expenditure of the government 
on imperial adventures, on the army and navy, and on 
purposes that seem to them wasteful and sinister. 
Disappointment with the effects of peace, the increasing 
troubles of industry, the spread of social decay in 
central Europe, the burden of armaments still pressing 
heavily, and the fear of new wars have reacted against 
all confidence in the men who still control the destiny 
of England. They have settled nothing. They have 
failed in the larger vision. They are acting in Ireland 
with passion and no wisdom. They have tried to buy 
off trouble in England by promises which cannot be 
redeemed. This failure — almost inevitable without 
great leadership, which is lacking — has produced a 
seething discontent which will lead to unpleasant 
events, serious disturbances, in the order of English 
life. And the state of Europe, its general malady, is 
beginning to touch England very closely. 

Yet, though I see the gravity of all this, and its 
darkness, I believe that England will pull through and 
carry on. There is in English character still an intui- 
tive, inarticulate wisdom. In spite of all the modi- 
fications caused by war, there is a solid common sense, 
a sense of compromise and the middle way, which be- 
longs to centuries of English tradition and is not yet 
deadened. The passion of the extremists leaves the 
main body of English men and women cold as ice. Dis- 
content, distress, exasperation, lead to violent speech, 
but rarely to violent action within the heart of England 
untouched by the fire of the Celtic fringe. In the past 

242 



THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLISH LIFE 

centuries there have been worse times than now, but 
people have suffered them with patience, with hard 
resolution, with high and noble valor. They have 
always taken the middle way. I think they will now. 
Out of present trouble England will emerge with her old 
spirit of stolidity, resource, and energy. If not, then 
other peoples will be hurt, grievously. If England 
goes down in decay, so will all Europe, and even America 
will not be scathless. If the British Empire, depend- 
ent still on England as the axle wheel of its progress, 
breaks up or falls apart, there will be a flaming anarchy 
in its ancient possessions — in India, Egypt, Africa — 
before which the horrors of the last war will be but 
playful things. If the English people take the road to 
revolution no country will be safe for democracy, or in 
any way secure of life, and white civilization, as we now 
know it and like it, will be doomed. Other races, not 
white, will press forward over our ruin and decadence. 
But that, by the grace of God and the spirit of a great 
race, shall not happen yet, unless madness overtakes 
all sanity, which must not happen. 



VII 

THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA 



THE new Republic of Austria created by the Treaty of 
Versailles — that is to say, by certain elderly diplomats 
sitting round a table and rearranging the map of the 
world without much knowledge of the human hopes 
and agonies involved in their decisions — became a 
tragic object lesson of all that was most miserable, hope- 
less, and diseased in the malady of Europe after the 
war. All the economic evils that afflicted such a country 
as Italy and threatened many other countries like France 
and Germany, and to some extent England, reached 
their fullest development in Austria. 

Other countries were overburdened by war debts, 
weakened by the decreasing production of labor, and 
poverty-stricken by the inflation of money, which was 
turned out easily enough from the printing presses but 
had not reality enough to buy raw material or the ele- 
mentary necessities of life from more prosperous parts 
of the world, so that the value of this paper money 
dropped low in foreign exchanges, while prices soared 
to fantastic heights and wages struggled to keep pace 
with them — and failed. Even England was touched by 
that disease — England which was envied by all her 
neighbors as rich and fat in her prosperity — and 
France and Italy were seriously sick of the same eco- 
nomic malady. But Austria was more than sick — 
Austria was dying. 

244 



THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA 

It was a ghoulish thing to sit at the deathbed of those 
Austrian people, as I did, studying the symptoms of 
this mortality, watching the death agony, probing into 
the cause of this scourge. Yet if Europe would save 
herself from something like the same doom and find a 
way of escape from a general danger which was creeping 
closer to many countries, the truth must be known. 
For the state of Austria was a tremendous rebuke to 
the shortsighted diplomacy which utterly failed to 
realize that a rearrangement of political frontiers must 
be based upon the physical needs and conditions of the 
people within those boundaries, and that it is not possi- 
ble to violate historical evolution for the sake of a theory 
without upsetting a natural equilibrium. It was also 
a tragic warning to all the nations of Europe that if they 
harked back to an intense national egotism, building 
barriers between themselves and their neighbors, 
checking the natural flow of trade and refusing co-oper- 
ation and mutual helpfulness, their own vitality and 
wealth would be impoverished and their own life men- 
aced by the illness of surrounding peoples. That lesson 
has not yet been learned. 

Poor Austria was the world's most horrible example 
of the results of political cruelty and stupidity, and 
yet by a strange irony of fate was also the most striking 
case of a general desire in the hearts of mankind for 
charity and brotherhood leading to some new system of 
international politics which might give real life and 
power to a League of Nations. That was a most ex- 
traordinary state of things which startled one as soon as 
one entered the city of Vienna with its stricken popu- 
lation. The psychology of those two and a half million 
people almost defied analysis because of this conflict 
between cruelty and charity of which they were the vic- 
tims. They saw themselves literally sentenced to death 
by the provisions of the peace treaty. Once belonging 

245 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

to the capital of a great empire, a highly civilized, 
artistic, music-loving folk, living on the products of 
other people's labor, on the business of exchange, 
finance, clerkship, the handling of merchandise, the 
demand and supply of life's little luxuries, the profits 
of administration and officialism, like so many of the 
inhabitants of other great cities, such as London, Paris, 
and New York, they saw themselves cut off from all 
their old sources of supply and from all their trade rela- 
tions with surrounding peoples who had once been under 
their government. The diplomats at Versailles who 
drew the boundaries of the new Austrian Republic as an 
isolation camp in the center of the old Austrian Empire — 
divided now into groups of peoples of different races — 
cut off the head of the empire from its body, so that 
Vienna is a bulbous-headed thing without a torso. 

It is exactly as though New York were suddenly 
amputated from the United States, or as though London 
were bounded on one side by Surrey and Sussex and on 
the north by the shires of Bedford and Warwick, 
divorced from its great industrial centers, its shipping 
trade, its mineral wealth, and its imperial business. A 
state of six and a half million inhabitants, Austria is 
obliged to import nearly ninety per cent of her coal, 
lacks all raw material necessary for her factories, with 
the exception of wood and iron ore, has neither wool, 
linen, leather, nor copper, possesses no more agricultural 
land than at its maximum may support its inhabitants 
for three months a year, and is surrounded by new 
states like Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia and Hun- 
gary, once of her own empire, which now are so narrow 
in their national egotism that they will not send any 
supplies to the relief of Vienna except under the pressure 
of foreign influence. 

But here comes the strange dilemma in Austrian 
minds. Aghast as they were at the doom which befell 

246 



THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA 

them, they might well have hated the nations who were 
their judges and their executioners. But the very 
peoples who condemned them to death were those who 
by charity and not by cruelty endeavored to postpone 
execution and to keep them alive. Sir William Goode, 
who went to Vienna as chairman of the reparation com- 
mittee charged with the task of securing the indemnity 
according to the treaty, found himself obliged by all 
the instincts of humanity, with the consent of the govern- 
ments he represented, to transform his reparation com- 
mittee into a committee of relief. Great Britain voted 
a sum of thirty-five million pounds for the relief of 
Austria. The Swiss Red Cross, first to attempt rescue 
of the stricken Austrians, was followed by the enormous 
organization of Mr. Hoover, distributing supplies from 
the United States and Canada. The Scandinavian 
nations co-operated in this work of international charity, 
which, as Mr. Joseph Redlich, the Austrian represent- 
ative on the League of Nations, has written, was the 
first, and for some time the only, manifestation of that 
spirit of national solidarity which during the war had 
been preached by President Wilson in his famous 
messages. This distinguished Austrian reveals the 
gratitude of his people in the following words: 

"This work of international charity has saved the 
lives of thousands of babies in Vienna. It has, through 
the organization of the Society of Friends of England, 
healed innumerable mothers. It has, by the energy and 
humanity of Mr. Hoover and his compatriots, nourished 
for more than two years hundreds of thousands of chil- 
dren in the schools of Vienna and industrial centers. 
It has lavished on us inestimable consolations, because 
not only have we benefited by such magnificent charity, 
but all humanity itself, crushed by this terrible war, 
has obtained moral profit from it. It is, therefore, 
the sacred duty of an Austrian to celebrate with all his 

247 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

heart such a manifestation of brotherhood. Never- 
theless, the misery of the masses, and still more of the 
middle classes, which still continues in spite of all this 
charity should not be misunderstood. It is not the result 
of a temporary situation or the passing incapacity of a 
people unable to re-establish themselves. On the con- 
trary, the material and moral causes are too powerful 
to be conquered by an enfeebled and stricken people." 



II 

When I went to the city of Vienna, after a long and 
dreadful journey from Trieste, the train in which I 
traveled was crowded with men and women who seemed 
desperately anxious to reach that city, and I wondered 
then, and wonder now, what evil spell enticed them that 
way. For Vienna had no room for them, no food for 
them except at monstrous prices, no fuel, no trade, and 
no hope for any of them, if they were of Austrian race. 
Yet every day I stayed there more people were crowd- 
ing into the city and not leaving it, owing to some freak 
of psychology at which I could only guess — a desire 
for a mad kind of gayety in their world of ruin, a herd- 
ing together of doomed people, the old spirit which in 
times of plague made men "eat, drink, and be merry; 
for to-morrow we die." There were others who came 
as vultures follow the trail of death and feed upon the 
corpses. They were human vultures growing fat on 
the disease of a nation by financial jugglings and com- 
mercial adventures in bankrupt stock. They were 
rich enemies of Austria, once within her empire, now 
getting the value of the foreign exchange which made 
their money worth ten times or fifty times as much as 
the Austrian paper money. They were the profiteers 
of her own people, who even in the general ruin had 
managed to loot fortunes, so that they could fling about 

248 



THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA 

these paper notes from vast stocks of paper with reck- 
less hands. So every hotel in a city of hotels was 
crowded with people sleeping on sofas, in bathrooms 
and drawing-rooms — anywhere for shelter. 

On the night of my arrival I hired a cab with two 
horses driven by a man who had the skill and passion 
of a Roman charioteer. At a furious gallop through 
a wet darkness he took me to many hotels in different 
parts of the city, laughed heartily when I was refused 
admittance time and time again, and shook hands like 
a friend and a brother when by a wild stroke of luck 
I managed to struggle into a small hotel owing to the 
favor of an Austrian waiter who had fond memories 
of Leicester Square. I paid my driver what I thought 
was three times his proper fare, but he scrunched up 
the notes and said: "I have to live! This would 
not buy me a packet of cigarettes!" In the end I 
gave him a hundred kronen and thought I had been 
robbed, but one day in Vienna was enough to teach me 
that this sum would hardly buy a meal in any modest 
restaurant. 

On that first night in Vienna a dreadful gloom, spiritual 
as well as physical, encompassed me when I went out 
into the streets for an evening walk — those streets 
which I remembered as so full of light and gayety and 
music before the war. Only a few lights glimmered. 
The great arc lamps were not burning. No gleam came 
through the shuttered windows. At six o'clock all 
the shops were closed, and there were not many people 
about in the darkness. They passed me like ghosts, and 
I saw through the gloom pale, haggard faces of men 
and women who shivered as they walked. Children 
with bare feet padded past on the wet pavements. One 
woman with a baby in her arms stopped before me and 
held out a skinny, clawlike hand and begged for money. 
Truly, I thought, I have come to a city of tragedy. 
17 2 49 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

After other nights in Vienna I knew that it was indeed 
a city of tragedy, more tragic than any other city I 
have seen in the world after the years of war, filled with 
masses of people, semistarved or three-quarters starved, 
with rickety children so wizened and weak that they 
looked like little monkeys after six months or more of 
life, with diseased mothers unable to feed them at the 
breast, with men of good education and good birth 
starving slowly but very surely on a diet of cabbage 
soup, with beautiful girls selling their beauty for one 
night's meal, and middle-class women watching their 
children wither and die, and a hopeless misery among 
these millions in the back streets of that great and splen- 
did city, with its palaces, its picture galleries, its glorious 
gardens, its noble architecture of banks and offices 
and mansions. 

Yet here were strange, bewildering contrasts between 
reckless luxury and starving poverty, between gayety and 
despair, which deceived many observers who saw only 
one side, or could not reconcile both sides with any 
reason. Night after night, after exploring the back 
streets and the places of malady, the hospitals and 
babies' creches, the feeding centers of charity, I used 
to push through the swing doors of some restaurant 
or concert hall and sit there to watch the crowd and listen 
to the music and find some clue to the riddle of things. 

These places were always crowded, and the crowd 
was always made up of the same types. There were 
great numbers of prosperous-looking men who seemed 
to have illimitable supplies of paper money. Some of 
them were Italians, some of them Greeks, Czechs, Serb- 
ians, Hungarians, and Jews. Many of them were 
Jews of no certain nationality and speaking every kind 
of language. Here and there were Austrian families, 
sitting here for the light and warmth, and lingering for 
a long time over cups of coffee and glasses of cold water, 

250 



THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA 

while the band played piece after piece with a brilliant 
gayety which seemed to pretend that life is very merry, 
free from care, full of sunshine, beauty, laughter, love. 

There was plenty of love in these places, but not of a 
kind good to see on the whole. Now and then my eyes 
were taken by young Austrian couples, who sat hand in 
hand or with their faces very close together and their 
eyes lighted by each other's light, and I thought they 
were pitiful to see, yet beautiful, like lovers shipwrecked 
on a desert place, with death about them and drawing 
near, so that perhaps this love was all they had, and 
enough. But mostly the lovemaking was bought by 
the prosperous-looking men, who were giving wine and 
cake to girls who, I guessed, had had no solid food 
that day and were paying for it by laughter and flirta- 
tion and the open marketing of their youth. They 
seemed nice girls, as good as your sisters or mine, of 
middle class, of decent upbringing, but now citizens 
of Vienna, which is starving, victims of a life where 
death is on the prowl, and a creeping disease of weakness, 
and where hunger is a familiar and frightening thing. 
Here in these places of luxury there was the glitter of 
light and warmth, at least of human breath and bodies, 
and the splendor of marble halls and the blare of jazz 
bands and fancy cakes for those whose purses bulged 
with paper money. Such a chatter! Such ripples of 
laughter! Such a joyous rhythm in the music of the 
band! But I thought of the hours, of the days, I had 
spent among rickety children, scrofulous children, and 
children who are saved from the hunger death only 
by the charity of their former enemies. I thought of 
words spoken to me by one of the men who know best 
the conditions of their country: 

"Unless the powers formulate some policy — on a 
broader line than free meals and temporary aid — ■ 
the Austrian people are doomed beyond any hope of 

251 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

life, and there will be a morbid poison in the heart of 
Europe." 

Those laughing people around me — how could they 
laugh and listen to light music and spend those kronen 
like counters in a game ? Some of them were living on 
the last of their capital. Others were parasites of 
profiteers. Others preferred laughter to tears, and 
came to listen to this gay music for forgetfulness. They 
were like the people in Boccaccio's novels who, with 
plague raging around them, gathered together and 
told amorous, wicked tales and wondered idly when 
death would touch them on the shoulder. Was Austria 
alone like that? Were there not many countries of 
Europe, perhaps even England — so rich and fat, as she 
was called until the unrealities of her arithmetic were 
put to the cruel test of truth — who were playing at the 
gay old game of life carelessly while outside disease 
crept nearer — the European malady which must be 
cured quickly lest we die? 

Ill 

Profiteering was shameless in Vienna during the war, 
and there were still millionaires — in paper money — who 
were able to afford the necessities and even the luxuries 
of life in spite of the wild insanity of the prices charged. 
It was they and the foreigners and middle-class folk 
who had saved up money who entirely ignored the 
market prices controlled by the government — theoret- 
ically — and adopted a system of smuggling — Schleich- 
handlung as it is called — so open and unabashed that it 
was a mockery of its name. The rich folk hired their 
smugglers. The middle-class folk did their own job, 
and on several days a week the tramcars going out to 
the market gardens and small farms in the courltry out- 
side the city were crowded with young men who had 

252 



THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA 

gone to buy their week's supplies direct from the peas- 
ants. Those country folk demanded more and more 
paper money for their eggs and butter and bacon and 
vegetables. In some districts they would not deliver 
their goods for any price in paper, but insisted upon a 
system of barter by which in return for food they got 
tobacco, boots, clothes, and manufactured articles. 

I know the case of a man who went to one of these 
peasants to buy food for his wedding. He wore a new 
jacket which he had saved for his wedding day. 

The peasant farmer refused his paper money, made 
an ugly grimace at it, and said: "That filth is no good 
to me. I will give you a sucking pig for that jacket. " 

The bargain was made, and the bridegroom went 
home in his shirt sleeves with his wedding feast under 
his arm. 

The peasant's point of view is more apparent when I 
say that a cheap suit of clothes in Vienna cost four 
thousand kronen when I was in that city. After that 
prices steadily mounted in paper values, and price of 
meat and fat had risen by a third and even a half, so 
that one pound of lard cost, nominally, five pounds, or 
twenty-five dollars in American money, with exchange 
at the normal rate, at the end of last year. The peas- 
ants raised the price of flour to such an extent that it 
was beyond the reach of all but the robber profiteers — ■ 
those gangs of financial harpies who still, by juggling 
with the money market and gambling in the rise and 
fall of Austrian securities, contrived to amass vast 
stocks of paper currency. It was they and the foreign- 
ers crowding into the city who spent five hundred kronen 
for a single person at dinner, and five times that amount 
if they indulged in expensive wines. The cost of a 
dinner followed by a dance, given by an American and 
his wife to members of Viennese society at the Hotel 
Bristol was more than a million kronen, worth forty-two 

253 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

thousand pounds in English money, according to the 
prewar value of Austrian kronen. 

It will be said by my readers: "But, after all, that 
means very little, because the money is turned out of 
the printing presses and has hardly any real value." 

That is true for those who can get hold of the print- 
ing press, as it were, but it is not true in the case of 
the struggling middle-class folk — clerks, schoolmasters, 
doctors, university professors, workingwomen with little 
homes and hungry babes, and the whole class of 
laboring men. They do not get unlimited supplies 
of this paper. I asked a young clerk in a newspaper 
office how much he was paid a week, and he told me a 
hundred and sixty kronen. I remembered that it had 
cost me more than a hundred kronen to get a meal of 
three thin courses which left me hungry. 

"How do you live?" I asked. 

"I don't," he said. 

In a babies' clinic filled with haggard, anaemic women 
who had brought their terrible little babes, all scrofu- 
lous and boneless, for medical examination, I spoke to 
a young Austrian doctor, and he told me very frankly 
that his own case was hopeless. 

"I get under two hundred kronen a week," he said, 
"and for three years I have lived mostly on cabbage 
soup, with now and then potatoes for a treat. Not in 
all this time have I eaten meat. These clothes I wear 
date from before the war. You see they have been 
turned. When they wear out and fall away from me 
I shall be like old Adam, for how can I buy a new suit? 
My case is no worse than thousands of others. It is 
beggary and starvation." 

In the great hospitals of Vienna, the best medical 
schools in the world before the war by universal repu- 
tation, it became almost impossible to carry on the work, 
owing to the dearth of supplies. Fuel was their great 

254 



THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA 

need, and many of the wards closed down because they 
could not be heated at all, and the patients were crowded 
together for warmth's sake in spite of the dangers of 
bad ventilation. Coal was almost out of the question, 
and wood was gathered from the neighboring country- 
side as much as possible. It was the only source of 
fuel for poor folk, and one of the sights of Vienna was 
the crowd of wood gatherers coming back laden with 
logs and branches under which children and women 
staggered to their hearthsides. 

IV 

In the midst of all this misery, and of the false, mad 
gayety which mocks at it, the relief committees, American 
and British, the Society of Friends, and other charitable 
agencies bring some light and joy by the enormous 
rescue work they continue to do among the children 
and nursing mothers. The network of this organiza- 
tion is on a wide-reaching scale, and one of the most 
moving and pathetic sights that have ever met my eyes 
was when I went to the old palace of the Archduke 
Franz Ferdinand, whose death was the straw which set 
Europe alight, and watched the feeding of more than a 
thousand children under the direction of an American 
officer and his assistants. 

I talked with many of the little ones as they bent 
over the bowls of soup and offered up a grace to God 
before their first spoonful. For many of them it was 
the first meal of the day, and for some the only meal. 
They were grateful for it, with the smiling gratitude of 
children who were born to suffering as a usual, common 
thing. But in spite of all this international work of 
charity, the large sums of money poured into Vienna 
from many countries, there is still a large population 
there which is not touched by the work of rescue. The 

255 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

grown-up folk do not get free meals. Genteel poverty 
in Vienna is unaided. The workingmen in the factories 
do not get enough raw material any more for their own 
bodies than for the machines they mind. Both are un- 
dernourished. In the National Assembly the Social 
Democrats and Christian Socialists have vied with each 
other in the fierceness of their denunciations of the 
rationed bread which is baked with a fifty-per-cent 
ingredient of uneatable maize flour producing horrible 
effects upon the bodies of those who eat it. In Decem- 
ber last many railway men and other workers went on 
strike as a protest against this filthy food, and the Social 
Democrats announced to the Assembly that they found 
it hard to calm the workmen in the factories, bitter 
and despairing because of their hunger, for hunger is 
the food of revolution. 

The conditions I have described still prevail. 

Intellectually as well as physically the people of 
Vienna are at least half starved. The university cannot 
afford to buy foreign books, the science men cannot 
keep abreast with modern research for the same reason. 
Even in the elementary schools teaching suffers because 
both teachers and scholars are listless with weakness at 
their work. So in all departments of life in Vienna 
one sees a devitalizing process, a slow death of all na- 
tional and individual energies, a creeping paralysis in 
the social body. 

Yet so cruel is the extent to which national egotism 
and intensification of selfishness and cynicism have been 
developed since the war by a failure to reshape the society 
of nations on more ideal lines that the neighbors of 
Austria, and even her own peasants, are abominably 
callous to that agony in Vienna. Jugo-Slavia and 
Czecho-Slovakia, once of the Austrian Empire, and 
now republican states, will not forgive Vienna for her 
old political domination and tyranny, and will not lift 

256 



THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA 

a hand to rescue the Viennese. The Czechs, with 
those old memories still rankling, deal contemptuously 
and tyrannically with the German minorities in their 
midst, and make it a crime for them to use their own 
language in the streets and public places of towns 
where they form a great part of the population. There 
is no hope for Vienna nor — carrying the argument over 
to other countries — for Europe itself, if that national 
and racial enmity is maintained. 

This state of things in Austria ought to be a tremen- 
dous warning to all Europeans. What is happening in 
Vienna so acutely — all those symptoms of disease — 
will become apparent in many other countries of Europe 
unless there is a speedy cure. These symptoms of social 
plague are the inflation of paper money, which is a mere 
sham covering the lack of real values; the difficulty of 
procuring raw material from more prosperous countries 
owing to the difference in exchange; the gradual weaken- 
ing of the individual worker and of the nation as a 
whole in physical well-being and moral will power; 
the debility of children, working mothers and laboring 
men, so that the future of the race is endangered and 
the birth rate is lowered, while the death rate goes up; 
a spiritual carelessness as to these evil conditions so 
that they come to be accepted as inevitable, and a levity 
of the social mind among those who still have money to 
spend, which disregards the necessity of urgent action, 
desperate remedies, in order to maintain the old stand- 
ards of civilization. 

It is difficult for ordinary minds to think in terms of 
Europe or beyond the frontiers of nationality; but if 
one studies the health chart of Europe as a whole one 
will find very clearly a spreading blackness correspond- 
ing to the areas constantly enlarging and embracing 
new peoples, in which there is economic disease and what 
I may call the withering of civilized life. The whole 

257 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

of Russia is in this condition, as far as we can get scien- 
tific evidence, owing to the break-up of its political 
machine and economic machine, bad as they were, 
followed by the wearing out of transport material and 
the lowering of production both in agriculture and in in- 
dustry — all this due more to the exhaustion and effort of 
war than to the methods of the Bolshevik regime. It 
is certain that Russia is dropping not so much into 
barbarism as into a material and spiritual decadence, 
so that all the impulses toward a higher type of civiliza- 
tion are for a time at least deadened. Its people are 
fighting with hunger, fighting with disease, fighting for 
the barest necessities of life, and not for beauty, art and 
luxury and joy, in which civilization comes to flower. 

The Russian disease is reaching out to neighboring 
states like Esthonia and Lithuania. They, too, are 
withering from the same causes — lack of abundant food, 
devitalizing of labor, physical disease, general debility. 
Poland is a strong soul with a stricken body. 

Is this plague creeping westward? Is there any 
certainty that it will stop at the frontiers of Germany? 
Austria is engulfed already, as I have shown, and 
there are signs that in spite of German efforts to get 
back to the old standards of work, the enormous energy 
and profit of the big trusts to recapture old markets, 
her people are sickening. 

Already at the end of last year hundreds of thousands 
of children in Germany were suffering from malnutri- 
tion, and not only the children, but workingmen. 
Seven hundred thousand children and mothers were 
being fed on charity, and everywhere in the big cities 
the shadow of starvation, if not actual hunger in its 
acute and terrible stage, was creeping over the country. 

So far, Austria, whose condition I have described at 
length, is the worst case of national decay, and all 
students of humanity and of social history must take 

258 



THE WARNING OF AUSTRIA 

it as the outstanding example of tragedy, due not to 
inherent weakness, but to the evil structure of inter- 
national relations. There is only one hope of rescue for 
Austria, and that is the breaking down of the hatred 
round her, the opening of trade relationships with her 
neighbors, a give-and-take in the matter of raw material, 
labor and commercial credit, co-operation instead of 
isolation and rivalry, Christian fellowship for mutual 
help and protection, instead of the cutthroat code of 
the old tribal laws. And that, in my humble judgment, 
is the one hope of rescue not only for Austria, but for 
Europe as a whole. 



VIII 

THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 



TO England as well as to Ireland friendship between 
our two peoples is utterly necessary for the sake of 
liberty, progress, honor, and peace of mind. The 
self-government of the Irish people is essential to the 
liberties of the English people, because until that is 
obtained we who are English or Scottish will never 
be free from a political conflict within our own island 
which cuts across every party issue, obscures our own 
domestic interests, and gives passionate war cries on 
one side or the other, to politicians who prefer passion 
as a bait for votes rather than intellectual argument. 

But England needs peace with Ireland for higher 
reasons than that. She needs it to regain her moral 
character in the judgment of foreign nations and of her 
own people in the far dominions; she needs it for her 
own souls sake. 

The Irish tragedy poisoned the mind of the world 
against us, and the wells of our own faith. It convicted 
us against our will, against our own sense of truth and 
honor, against the noblest and most generous instincts 
of the best among us, of most damnable hypocrisy. 
Justly or unjustly, by truth or by lies — I will tell 
what I think is the truth — the Irish people were able 
to charge us with that vice and bring down upon us 
the scorn or wrath of all our enemies (and we have many), 
while arousing suspicion or surprise among our few best 

260 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

friends. During the war we had proclaimed high 
ideals for humanity, and hundreds of thousands of our 
men died, as many of them thought, to make them 
prevail. It was, we said, a spiritual fight against 
the brute force of militarism. It was a war against 
Prussianism in all its forms. Afterward, when peace 
should come, we would demand the self-determination 
of oppressed nations, we should protect the right of the 
little peoples, we should establish a reign of liberty 
within a League of Nations governed by an international 
court of justice administering a new code of world- 
wide peace. Into these high sentiments, expressed 
fervently by English idealists, came inevitably at 
public meetings one sharp interjection — "What about 
Ireland?" That question was what a friend of mine 
calls a "conversation stopper." At best it would make 
the most fluent speaker pause a moment in his rush of 
oratory. 

Yes, after all, what about Ireland? We had estab- 
lished martial law there of a kind never known even in 
Austria or Russia on such a scale in proportion to popu- 
lation, with tanks, armored cars, machine guns, air- 
planes, all the equipment of modern warfare, after 
"the war to end war." Justly or unjustly, we had at 
least adopted Prussian methods, after killing Prussian 
militarism. In Ireland, rightly or wrongly, we had 
abandoned the ideal of self-determination. And plead- 
ing abominable provocation, the essential justice of 
checking a murder campaign, the right to repress 
rebellion against the Crown, we were allowing our 
military and police forces to adopt the old primitive 
law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, without any 
reference at all to other laws of a more recent and more 
civilized kind. 

All civil law was abolished in Ireland, at a time when 
English idealists were pleading for its extension to inter- 

261 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

national affairs as a nobler method of argument than 
that of war. In Ireland trial by jury had been replaced 
by courts-martial, in which the accused were often 
the judges. Inquests on the bodies of murdered civilians 
had been replaced by military inquiries in which no 
evidence was admitted if distasteful to the court. Any 
Irish man or woman could be arrested without a charge 
and imprisoned without trial, and thousands of them 
were thus arrested and imprisoned. Though Ministers 
of the Crown referred to the strife in Ireland as "war," 
we shot or hanged our prisoners if taken with arms in 
their hands, and though for many months the same 
Ministers denied that our soldiers and police took re- 
venge for their own losses by "reprisals" against Irish 
people and property, that system of meeting terror by 
counter-terror was afterward admitted and made 
official. When, therefore, our Prime Minister and his 
colleagues, or any other public or private person, spoke 
of the spiritual hopes of the world, the right of majori- 
ties to the liberty of self-government, the duty of France 
to demobilize her armies and her hatreds, the justice 
of the punishment inflicted upon Austria for her former 
tyrannies against subject peoples, or the cruelties of 
Germany in Belgium, that cry of, "What about Ire- 
land?" came as a confusing and conscience-pricking 
interruption. 

For it is not in the English character to be insensitive 
to criticism or satire so poignant as that. If we are 
hypocritical as a people, it is not through insincerity, 
but through stupidity or ignorance, or particular preju- 
dice. We do not and cannot, as a nation, ride rough- 
shod over justice, or liberty, or fair play, without stir- 
rings of conscience that hurt horribly. Not deliberately, 
or without an immense amount of argument in self- 
justification, can we, as a people, accept a policy of 
brutality or tyranny. There is an inexhaustible store 

262 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

of generous feeling among English folk, amounting 
almost to weakness, in regard to smaller people than 
themselves, to all helpless and little things, to all under 
dogs. That generosity can only be overwhelmed by a 
wave of passion, or blinded by ignorance that tyranny 
is at work or injustice established. This Irish tragedy, 
therefore, has been England's tragedy as well, for it 
tortured many minds among us, and was bitterly re- 
sented by those who desired to crush the rebellion by 
all ways of force, as well as by those who detested the 
methods and morals of military repression, because 
the very name of Ireland laid us open to attack, put 
disgrace upon us, challenged our honor and our decent 
reputation in the world. The Irish made use of that 
weapon, more powerful against our prestige than the 
revolvers of their "gunmen." They knew that we 
were vulnerable to that form of attack, because, what- 
ever our faults may be, we stand or fall in the world by 
our reputation for justice, and not by the power of 
guns. So Ireland felt sure of winning most of what she 
wanted if she could put us in the wrong, and our poli- 
ticians gave them a thousand chances. 

Irish propaganda — like all propaganda one-sided 
and not careful of exact truth — was wonderfully organ- 
ized and far reaching. It found its way, day after 
day, month after month, into the newspapers of Amer- 
ica, France (when France was annoyed with us), Italy, 
Russia, Poland, and all our own dominions, where its 
accounts of raids and imprisonings, shootings, hangings, 
and burnings stirred the deepest emotion of people 
who had Irish blood in their veins, or a sense of chivalry 
and indignation among others. The darker, murderous 
side of Sinn Fein outrages were but lightly touched, and 
the Irish picture presented to the world through its 
literary agents was the simple and stirring spectacle of 
a little people fighting with heroic spirit against a brutal 

263 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

and obstinate tyranny. Such friends as we had were 
disconcerted and mystified. 

Their first incredulity was overborne by apparent 
weight of evidence and by repetition, and they were 
aghast at the reign of anarchy which England had made 
in her sister island. "How is it," they asked, "that 
the English, who are not a brutal people, whose men (as 
the war proved) are generally kind-hearted, even to 
their enemies, who for centuries have led the way to 
civil progress in Europe, should lose their moral qualities 
and betray their best ideals in the case of Ireland? 
We cannot understand!" 

So spoke our friends in America, in France, and in 
other countries, as I knew by letters I received. Even 
the French people, who are not soft in putting down 
rebellion, who are not tolerant of political revolt, were 
scandalized by the English treatment of Ireland. From 
one Frenchman who served with our armies in the war 
on the western front, I had a letter in which he ex- 
plained his perplexity about Ireland and added a post- 
script in which he summed up his indignation in one 
savage little sentence," Your government disgusts us!" 

If our friends talked like that, what of our enemies ? 
They found this Irish business to their liking. It 
provided them with one more proof of the incurable 
abomination of England. "John Bull," they said, 
"always was and always will be a hypocrite and a bully. 
For centuries he has prated about liberty while he has 
thrust his fist into the face of all rivals, trodden down the 
native races of his colonial and captured territories, 
increased and held his empire by brute force, exercised 
the most cynical diplomatic policy, and done all things 
in the names of righteousness and God. His present 
terrorism in Ireland is only one more proof of his tradi- 
tional brutality, and does not surprise us in the least." 
That, in a mild way, was the verdict of England's 

264 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

enemies in every part of the world to which Irish propa- 
ganda reached. 

It reached every civilized country except England. 
Owing to the government control of many newspapers 
(bought by members of the Coalition to stifle criticism 
and spread political propaganda of their own), and on 
account of the timidity or incredulity or dishonesty 
of others not so bought, the only facts published in the 
majority of English newspapers after the Irish rebellion 
of 19 1 6 were those provided by Dublin Castle or the 
Front Bench in the House of Commons. In that way 
there was, for a long time, an almost complete boycott 
of any news which tended to discredit our officials or 
armed forces in Ireland, while on the other hand full 
publicity was given to all Sinn Fein outrages and crimes. 
A few journals, like the Daily News, the Manchester 
Guardian, and The Nation, succeeded in breaking through 
this conspiracy of silence, but they only reached a 
limited public and were under suspicion as unpatriotic 
or revolutionary sheets by readers who think that all 
criticism of government is unpatriotic and that all 
truth which disturbs the self-righteousness of the 
English conservative mind is revolutionary. 

The Sinn Fein activists of the "Irish Republican 
Army," described more briefly as the "Irish gunmen," 
spoiled the beautiful picture of a heroic people fighting 
nobly for liberty's sake, by acts of brutality and methods 
of Warfare which could not be condoned or forgiven by 
any soul alive who hated cruelty and still had faith 
in Christian ethics. These acts were reported to the 
English people without mention of reprisals or cruelties 
on the other side, or with absolute denials by public 
officials of any such charge against themselves and their 
agents. Only by rumors, by tales^told privately, in 
whispers, by seeing smoke and suspecting fire, was the 
average Englishman aware of any dirty work which 

18 265 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

might smirch our honor in the world. That was so 
for at least a year after the ending of the war, until 
admissions were made in the House of Commons, and 
facts were admitted in papers like the Times, which 
charged our Irish administration with action and policy 
contrary — to say the least — to our traditions of honor 
and justice. I think our only excuse in history, as a 
people, for permitting the dishonesty and villainy of 
some of our statesmen, who played into^the hands of 
Sinn Fein by adopting evil as a cure for evil, is our 
general ignorance of what was happening, and the wide, 
unbridgeable gulf that lies between English and Irish 
mentality. 

ii 

There is, of course, one type of mind in England 
which made any reasonable settlement of Ireland im- 
possible through the centuries, and will make it impos- 
sible now if he can. He is actually the old type of John 
Bull Englishman, hardly exaggerated by his carica- 
ture, but utterly unrepresentative of the nation as a 
whole — hard in his imperialism, narrow in his Protes- 
tantism, reactionary against any effort of change or 
progress, sure that the Englishman of his own type is 
the noblest effort of God, disliking all aliens, including 
Irish, Welsh, and Scotch, and a firm believer in "reso- 
lute rule" with machine guns and tanks for all rebellious 
people, such as native races, and workingmen who 
want more wages. He was the defender of the Amritsar 
massacre. He is all for shooting down the unemployed 
if they make themselves annoying. He would like to 
see a rounding up of all socialists, labor leaders, and 
intellectual theorists who are endeavoring to change 
the old structure of English life with its Heaven-sent 
prerogatives of great landed estates for the "good 
families," high profits for the capitalists, and low 

266 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

wages for the working class. His ideas on Ireland are 
clear and sharp. "The Irish people," he says, "are just 
savages, and they must be dealt with as such. Shoot 
'em down wholesale if they won't obey English law. 
Reprisals ? Certainly, and plenty of them. More power 
to their elbow! as Mr Balfour said. Let our men have 
a free hand and teach 'em what's what! If necessary, 
have a new conquest of Ireland, with blood and fire, 
and do it well this time. The best thing would be to 
sink the whole damned island." 

That type of man is still to be found in many places 
and classes of English life, and it was his type which 
supported Sir Hamar Greenwood and the Prime Minis- 
ter's Tory masters in their policy of reprisals and coun- 
ter-terror. He is to be found in sporting clubs down 
Pall Mali and St. James's Street, on the race course at 
Epsom, in the crowd that goes to see a prize fight, in 
the manor house of a country squire, often in the rectory 
of a country parish. But his type — not without use in 
its time — is old-fashioned and dwindling away. Even 
before the war he was passing, and when the war came 
his dogmatic opinions were heard with laughter at 
mess tables where young officers of ours who had been 
thinking hard about many problems of life and death, 
the causes of the war and the hopes of the world, were 
not taking his blusterings as the last word in the way 
of wisdom. But he still exists, and writes letters to 
the Morning Post, which is published exclusively for 
his class and ideas. Throughout the Irish trouble he 
sat solid in the Coalition Government, fuming and 
fretting over the weakness of the Prime Minister who 
was always tempted to compromise with the forces 
of disorder and hardly restrained. He snorted with 
laughter when Terence McSwiney — with mistaken fa- 
naticism, perhaps, but with no ignoble motive and a 
burning love for Ireland in his heart — died in his hunger 

267 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

strike, and he became purple in the face with rage when 
the policy of reprisals was challenged by Mr. Asquith. 
It was his belief in force — and force alone — as a means 
of settlement that enabled the government to abandon 
statesmanship in all their dealings with Ireland, and to 
leave it to the devil. 

But all through these recent years that type of mind 
has been a small minority, though powerful in its com- 
mand of the political machine. It did not represent 
the great body of moderate Englishmen who during the 
years of this tragedy were anxious to know the truth, 
but could not, and to find some kind of reasonable 
solution to the Irish problem, which seemed insoluble. 

This average Englishman, as I met him in tramcars, 
teashops, and other places of middle-class circumstance, 
was mightily perplexed about the whole business, and 
had poor sources of information. He did not under- 
stand the Irish temperament, nor see any way out of 
the Irish problem. He still clung to old sentiments 
and old illusions. For one thing, he could not bring 
himself to believe that the Irish had any real hatred, 
or cause of hatred, for England and the English. He 
saw no adequate reason for hatred, and argued that the 
Irish with whom he came in contact in London or else- 
where were nice people, with a simple faith and a sense 
of humor, not at all murderous in their instincts. He 
liked most of their men, and all their women, as far 
as he knew them, and believed firmly, in spite of all 
evidence to the contrary, that Sinn Fein and its "wild 
men" were only a minority of extremists who did not 
at all representee great body of Irish people, and that, 
therefore, their violence was artificially engineered, and 
if defeated by English resolution would be followed by a 
renewal of friendship between our two peoples, provided 
Ireland was given a generous measure of Home Rule. 

It was only after Sinn Fein had killed many police- 

268 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

men and soldiers that he began to think that there were 
some qualities in the Irish character which baffled him. 
His remembrance of old novels by Charles Lever, 
Samuel Lover, and other writers, as well as the stage 
type of Irishman traditional for a long time in England, 
still held his imagination with the figure of a breezy, 
laughing, devil-may-care, romantic soul who helped 
to win most of England's battles and was loyal to the 
flag. Gradually he was aware that there was something 
wrong in that picture. He found an unexpected cruelty 
in the Irish people, the cruelty of the peasant mind 
brooding over old grievances, unforgiving, relentless in 
the pursuit of vengeance. Where he expected weakness 
he found surprising strength — most obstinate resistance 
to English "reason." Where he looked for sentiment, 
especially in the war with Germany, he found the hard- 
est realism, a most selfish refusal of allegiance, and, 
worst of all, black treachery to Old England in her hour 
of need. What was the meaning of that? "What the 
devil," he asked, plaintively, "is the matter with these 
people?" 

It must be remembered that the average Englishman 
knows very little of Irish history. He does not read 
it in his school books; he does not find it in his news- 
papers. Vaguely he knows and admits that England 
in the old days was "rather rough" on Ireland, and, 
generously, as it seems to him, he wishes to make amends. 
He thinks he made amends by the Wyndham Land 
Acts which enabled the peasants to buy their land with 
English credit, and for the life of him he cannot under- 
stand why the Irish hark back to the past and refuse to 
recognize that England is a good friend. 

He does not realize that anything England does for 
Ireland, or has done, or will do, is not received with 
gratitude as a favor, or as a generous act, but is re- 
garded as a long-delayed concession forced from us, 

269 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

and as dust in the balance compared with half a thousand 
years of tyranny, robbery, and brutality. He does 
not understand that the claim for national independence 
has never been abandoned for all that time, and that, 
though the spark burns dim in times of misery, it flames 
up again and spreads, as now it spreads again, like 
a prairie fire throughout those island people with their 
frightful remembrance of history, their cherished faith, 
their undying pride. 

The average Englishman, of whom I was one, was 
shocked to his inmost soul by the rebellion of 1916. I 
shall never forget when that dreadful news came to us 
on the western front. We had been through a ghastly 
winter when the Germans held all the good positions 
against us on the ridges in Flanders, while we were in 
the flats and swamps at a time when we were still weak 
in artillery, so that they pounded our men with shell 
fire and we could answer back but feebly. Day after 
day, night after night, our men were blown to bits, our 
casualty lists lengthened with the names of our noblest 
youth, and we knew that the Germans were hardly 
touched in strength, while on the other fronts they were 
winning stupendous victories and England's life was 
menaced. At that very time the Irish tried to stab us 
in the back — did stab us in the back. Young officers 
of ours, and of theirs, on leave in Dublin, were shot 
down, sometimes without arms in their hands. Young 
Irish boys sniped English soldiers from the roofs, though 
some of our officers would not give the word of command 
to fire back on them, as I know, because of the youth 
of those lads. There was proof since, admitted without 
shame, that the Irish leaders were in negotiation with 
the Germans for active help. They expected German 
ships to arrive with arms and ammunition, and with 
fighting men. They were willing to get any kind of 
German help in order to defeat England in her time of 

270 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

peril. Count Plunkett, I am told, went in disguise to 
Germany to negotiate this aid. Casement in Germany 
was acting on his own initiative, tortured by his con- 
science and by his fears. When that news came to us 
it seemed at first incredible, and then unforgivable. 
It is still hard to forget or forgive by any Englishman, 
and by some Irishmen. An Irish general said to me: 
"I can never go back to Ireland — never! I can never 
take off my hat to an Irishman again." There were 
tears in his eyes as he spoke. 

The average Englishman did not know the Irish 
defense of that act of rebellion, and, if he knew, would 
not admit a word of it. I know, and will set it out with 
fairness. The Sinn Feiner said, as one of their leaders 
said to me: "We would have fought for you if you had 
guaranteed our national claims. We would have fought 
for you if you had let us fight under our own flag and 
in our own Irish brigades. The Nationalist leaders 
(wrongly, as we now think) arranged a scheme of re- 
cruiting — which was turned down by your War Office. 
Hundreds of thousands of young Irishmen (stupidly, as 
we now believe) did volunteer and were drafted, not in 
their own brigade, as a rule, but in English battalions, 
and died in heaps to save the liberty of England while 
strengthening England's tyranny in Ireland. Gradually 
we saw this. England's fight for liberty was not to be 
our liberty. What was happening in Ulster? The 
Ulster volunteers who had been allowed to arm against 
us in 1914 were still kept back in Ulster, while our men 
were being massacred in Gallipoli and France. They 
stood solid as a menace to southern Ireland, with 
preferential treatment and secret help from England. 
Very well! We began to recruit our own volunteers. 
At first there were two groups — John Redmond's, 
designed for the help of England, and James Connolly's, 
for the liberty of Ireland. A split took place, led by 

271 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Connolly. Presently the Redmond men drifted over 
to Connolly's side — for Ireland and not for England. 
Then we thought we saw our chance of victory. Eng- 
land was hard pressed. Germany seemed certain of 
victory. It was Ireland's chance of liberty. There 
were divided counsels — some wanting to wait until we 
were stronger. Pearse was overborne by the spirit of 
Connolly. But the arrangements were faulty, and the 
affair was a tactical mistake. At first the people of 
Dublin were against us. They cursed us for our fool- 
hardy act. After three days, when the 'rebels,' as 
England called them, were hard pressed and losing, and 
being killed in large numbers, the people were all for us. 
They were set on fire by the heroism of those boys, and 
the spirit of Ireland, the soul of Ireland, was stirred 
to its depths by pity, by pride, by the old call of nation- 
ality, and then by an undying hatred of England, when 
General Maxwell began his Bloody Assizes, executed 
James Connolly and fourteen others, and swept into 
prison, with unnecessary brutalities and horrors, three 
thousand young Irish lads. After that Sinn Fein was 
established in every Irish home outside Protestant 
Ulster, and the whole people were dedicated anew to the 
liberty of their nation. " 

The liberty of their nation ! Were they, then, groan- 
ing under a brutal tyranny, these Irish people, who 
talked like that with a passionate sincerity which could 
not be doubted, because so many of them were ready to 
die, and did die, for their faith? It is that which baffled 
the English mind, not conscious of imposing tyranny on 
Ireland before they rose in rebellion. 

in 

Now what is the actual truth about all this tragedy? 
Was Ireland utterly right, or utterly wrong, in rising 

272 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

in revolt against our rule and going to all lengths in 
guerrilla warfare with complete ruthlessness, to obtain 
her desires? Or was England utterly right — or utterly 
wrong — in regarding this warfare as murder and trying 
to stamp it out by methods as ruthless as those used 
against her? Will England be justified in history — 
or Ireland? Above all, by what madness, or badness, 
or insanity, or stupidity, on one side or on both sides, 
did our two peoples come to such a pass when all law 
was abandoned for a bloody struggle of civil strife, 
ghastly in its commentary on those hopes of inter- 
national peace and the progress of humanity which 
surged up in many hearts out of the utter horror of the 
European war? 

To answer these questions one must go back to ancient 
history, and deal with passion as well as with facts, and 
with illusion as well as with reality, for there can be no 
understanding of what has happened in recent days 
without a knowledge of the past. 

The past calls to the present in the Irish mind, like 
the cry of the banshee wailing through the ages of Irish 
history. The English forget their past, at least in its 
most hideous aspect, looking at the present with realis- 
tic eyes and forward to the future with what hope they 
have. But the Irish have a long, bitter, relentless mem- 
ory which is a morbid wound in their psychology. 
The English say, "Let the dead past bury its dead," 
but the Irish rake over old bones and make relics of them 
for animating their passion afresh. 

I saw the strength and passion of Irish memory before 
the war, in Dublin. On a Saturday night there would 
be little groups of people at the corners of back streets 
listening to young men or girls standing on orange boxes 
and singing or reciting old songs and ballads. I listened 
to them sometimes, and always they were ballads of 
Irish episodes long forgotten and meaningless in the 

273 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

English mind. They were about the battles of Limerick 
and the Boyne, and the siege of Drogheda, and the old 
evictions of Irish peasants, and the shooting of Irish 
by English redcoats. Hardly one Englishman in two 
million could tell anything at all about those battles. 
He would not know when they were fought, or by whom 
they were fought, or what side won. But in the Irish 
memory they belong to yesterday. 

Their songs are filled with a mournful spirit and with 
the passion of a people under tyranny, and they are sung 
in Irish ears from the cradle to the grave. I remember 
going one night to a little place called "Mooney's 
Oyster Bar" with some Irish and English friends and 
one young Jew. Outside in the yard an Irish girl was 
playing a fiddle and we called her in and asked her to 
play some jig tunes for our gayety. But presently the 
tunes she played made us all sad because of the notes 
of tragedy that broke even through her jigs, and when 
the Irishmen in our company began to sing old songs to 
her fiddle, the young Jew with us, who was a little drunk, 
wept in sympathy, and claimed as his excuse that he was 
descended from one of the kings of Ireland! If that 
was the effect on a Jew, what must happen in the spirit 
of an Irish Catholic when he hears these old ballads of 
his race?' They are crooned into his ears as he lies in 
his cradle, or is carried in the arms of a peasant mother. 
From the time he learns to speak he hears old tales and 
old songs, in which the Irish have but one enemy — the 
English. And from the time he begins to read, his books 
are filled with "the wrongs of Ireland," the bloody 
tyranny of the Saxon. From a thousand years ago the 
ghosts of Irish history call to him. In old wells, and in 
the ruins of chapels, castles, shrines, he hears their 
voices, telling him of the glory of Ireland when it was 
an island of saints and scholars, poets and painters, 
whose illuminated missals and golden chalices and em- 

274 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

broidered gowns and all the arts and crafts of life gave 
them a civilization and a culture at a time when England 
was inhabited by brutal, unlettered Saxons, and when 
northern Europe was still uncultured. 

Some of that is true, but what is less known to the 
Irish is the downfall of their own glory by an internecine 
strife in which the English had no part, when their own 
"kings" — at one time no less than sixty — fought against 
one another until the island was laid waste and its people 
reduced to misery by the incessant raids and ravagings, 
burnings and slaughterings, of rival clans. 

"Why did the English ever go to Ireland? Who 
asked them to go, anyway?" shouted a voice from the 
gallery of a hall in New York when I was lecturing there, 
and not to score a point, but as a fact of history, I gave 
the answer that the English went at the request of Pope 
Adrian IV, in the reign of Henry II, "to check the tide 
of crime, to restore Christian worship, and to reform 
the manners of the people," as he wrote in his papal 
bull. But, as I admitted to the New York audience, 
also in the interests of truth and history, the advent of 
the English and their subsequent acts did not give the 
world, or the Irish, an object lesson in good manners. Our 
manners were disgusting, and our methods abominable. 

They were Normans rather than English who went to 
Ireland with the consent of Henry II, and they parceled 
out Ireland, after fierce fights with the Irish chieftains, 
very much as their predecessors had invaded and par- 
titioned England in the time of William the Conqueror. 
But there was always a territory which the Norman chiefs 
in Ireland never penetrated, and in this country "be- 
yond the pale," as it was called, the Irish kept to their 
own customs and laws until they captured their conquer- 
ors by the beauty of their women, and many of the Nor- 
man invaders, like the Geraldines, became "more Irish 
than the Irish." 

275 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

It was in the sixteenth century, during the reign of 
Henry VII, that English law began to press heavily 
upon the Irish people, and that was due to the policy 
of the Anglo-Irish chieftains who supported the two 
impostors, Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel, in 
their claim to the English crown. In retaliation, 
Tudor Henry sent over a strong army under Sir Edward 
Poynings, and at Drogheda he forced the Irish Parlia- 
ment to pass a measure called Poyning's Act, which 
declared that all English laws should have force in 
Ireland and that all legislation in the Irish Parliament 
should be confined to measures which had first been 
approved by the King and the Privy Council in England. 
That was really the beginning of the long and desperate 
struggle between the Irish and the English peoples. 
Always there have been patriots in Ireland to raise 
revolt against the power and practice of that Act, always 
the ruling caste in England has endeavored to enforce 
its authority, though its very name was forgotten except 
by lawyers and historians. 

The story of that beginning is forgotten in Ireland 
itself, but they still remember the heroic O'Neills who 
defied the English right to rule in Ireland, and the 
bloody massacres by Elizabeth's Earl of Essex, who was 
sent to suppress their uprisings. 

A fatal thing, the worst of all for England as for 
Ireland, happened when the Stuarts followed the 
Tudors. It was under James I that Ireland, weak after 
long strife, was first colonized by Scottish and Protes- 
tant settlers in Ulster, whose numbers were increased, 
after a massacre in 1641 by Irish Catholics, when Oliver 
Cromwell came over to revenge himself for the Irish 
support of Charles I, and to crush their claim to inde- 
pendence under another O'Neill. By that colonization 
of Ulster, Ireland became no longer one people, but two 
peoples, divided in race, in religion, in every strain of 

276 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

temperament, in every political tradition. It was the 
sowing of dragon's teeth in Ireland. 

Oliver and his Roundheads killed the Irish Catholics 
with the joy of religious fanaticism, and the deeds they 
did in the name of the Lord are remembered with the 
sweat of agony in Irish blood. Oliver had his own plan 
to end all Irish trouble. It was to fill the island with 
more Scots and English, and transport the Irish to 
penal settlements beyond the sea, where most of them 
might die. In some measure his plan was fulfilled. 
Connaught alone was made into a reservation for the 
Irish, into which thousands of them were driven like 
cattle, and Irish women and girls were shipped off" to 
slavery in the West Indies. It was a crime that cried 
out to God for vengeance, and Sinn Fein has remembered 
it after three centuries. What is one of the miracles 
of history is the survival of the Irish spirit and of their 
race and faith. With one brief respite in the reign of 
James II, for whom they rose when he lost the English 
crown, and then the Irish harp, at the battle of the 
Boyne, the policy of Protestant England for those three 
hundred years or so was to kill Catholicism in Ireland, 
and destroy the Catholic Irish, if not by physical ex- 
termination, at least by causing the death of their trade, 
their industries, their political power, their racial spirit, 
their language, their laws, and their religion. 

William III enacted the penal laws which in successive 
reigns ruled out a Catholic Irishman from all human 
dignity. No Catholic was allowed to sit in the Irish 
Parliament (whose privileges were constantly reduced), 
nor to have any voice in making the laws of his own 
land, nor to hold any public office. His priests were 
hunted like vermin from hovel to hovel, and killed when 
caught. No Irishman, as late as the nineteenth cen- 
tury, could own a horse worth more than five pounds, 
and any Protestant enemy might demand it from him 

277 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

on payment of that sum. The Irish peasantry were 
the serfs of English, or Anglo-Irish, landlords — worse, 
indeed, than slaves, who are well fed by their owners, 
for they had to scrape their own livelihood out of plots 
they hired at a rental beyond their means, and were 
dispossessed of the land if they could not pay their 
rents, increased remorselessly if the value of the land 
went up owing to their industry and their improvements. 



IV 

So great was the misery of the people, and yet so won- 
derful their spirit, so infamous was the injustice of 
English rule which deliberately destroyed Irish industry 
lest it should compete with English trade, that even 
the Protestant members of the Irish Parliament, like 
Henry Grattan, revolted against the suppression of the 
Catholics and voted for their emancipation. It was at 
the time of the American War of Independence, and 
Grattan was supported by a large number of Irish 
volunteers who had enrolled themselves as a defense 
force against American attack. Under the pressure of 
this movement, the British government agreed to pass 
an Act of Catholic emancipation, but George III, with 
the Catholic bogey always in his mad old mind, took 
fright, at the eleventh hour, and refused his assent. It 
was then that the volunteers, who had been a loyal 
force, under the name of United Irishmen, turned to 
rebellion. In the time of the French Revolution they 
made overtures to Napoleon to help them in their cause, 
as a century later, without the same excuse, another 
body of Irishmen turned to Germany for the same kind 
of aid. A French fleet was wrecked by storms, and 
the United Irishmen were crushed by Sir Ralph Aber- 
crombie with his English redcoats in a bloody and ruth- 
less way. 

278 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

In 1782, before the outburst of that rebellion, but 
when there was a demand for coercive measures against 
the Irish volunteers, Charles James Fox warned the 
British government of the danger of such policy, and 
the liberality and wisdom of his words might have rung 
in the ears of British Ministers when, after a hundred 
and thirty years, history repeated itself. 

The Irish, finding that they had nothing to expect 
in the British House of Commons from the justice of 
their demands, found resources in themselves; they 
armed; their Parliament spoke out; and the very next 
year, the same Minister who had before put a negative 
on all their expectations, came down to the House and 
made the amende honorable for his past conduct, gave 
to the demands of an armed people infinitely more than 
he had refused to the modest application of an unarmed, 
humble nation. Such had been the conduct of the 
then Minister and his colleagues; and this was the les- 
son which the Irish had been taught: "If you want 
anything, seek for it not unarmed and humbly, but 
take up arms and speak manfully and boldly to the 
British Ministry, and you will obtain more than at 
first you might have ventured to expect." 

This was the consequence, said Fox, of the ill use 
of the superintending power of the British Parliament, 
which had made millions of subjects rise against a Power 
which they felt only as a scourge. At the same time 
Fox made it plain that he yielded to the demands of 
the Irish for the right to legislate for themselves with- 
out interference because he believed them to be founded 
on justice, and not because they were demanded with 
the force of arms: 

"He must be a shallow politician who would resort 
to such means (those taken in the war with America) 
to enforce obedience to laws which were odious to those 
whom they were made to bind/' For his part, he would 

279 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

rather see Ireland totally separated from the Crown of 
England than kept in obedience only by force. Un- 
willing subjects were little better than enemies; it 
would be better not to have subjects at all than to have 
such as would be continually on the watch to seize the 
opportunity of making themselves free. If this country 
should attempt to coerce Ireland, and succeed in the 
attempt, the consequence would be that, at the breaking 
out of war with every foreign Power, the first step 
must be to send troops over to secure Ireland instead 
of calling upon her to give a willing support to the 
common cause. . . . He desired to look forward to 
that happy period when Ireland should experience the 
blessings that attend freedom of trade and constitution; 
when by the richness and fertility of her soil, the indus- 
try of her manufacturers, and the increase of her popu- 
lation she should become a powerful country. Then 
might England look for powerful assistance in seamen 
to man her fleets, and soldiers to fight her battles. 
England renouncing all right to legislate for Ireland, the 
latter would more cordially support the former as a 
friend whom she loved. If this country, on the other 
hand, was to assume the powers of making laws for 
Ireland, she must only make an enemy instead of a 
friend; for where there was not a community of inter- 
ests, and a mutual regard for those interests, there the 
party whose interests were sacrificed became an enemy. 

After the failure of the Irish rebellion, Pitt and his 
agents set to work to unite Ireland and England under 
one legislature, and they found bribery an easy way. 
By payments of money, and land, and places, the Irish 
votes in the Dublin Parliament were bought in numbers 
sufficient to pass the Act of Union. 

It was an Act which Mr. Gladstone said "was carried 
by means so indescribably foul and vile that it can have 
no moral title to existence whatever. " 

280 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

And, as Lecky wrote: "In a country where the sen- 
timent of nationality was as intense as in any part of 
Europe, it destroyed the national legislature contrary 
to the manifest wish of the people, and by means so 
corrupt, treacherous, and shameful that they are never 
likely to be forgotten. The Union of 1800 was not only 
a great crime, but, like most crimes — a great blunder." 

After that, in the beginning of the industrial era of 
England, the work of ruin in Ireland was completed 
by "Cutthroat Castlereagh" and the manufacturing 
interests in the English House of Commons, who put 
up tariff walls against Irish industries, so blockading 
the commercial life of that unhappy island. Catholic 
emancipation was gained at last by the renewal of 
revolt under Daniel O'Connell, to which George IV 
yielded on the advice of the Duke of Wellington, who 
said he "wanted no more war," but the spiritual relief of 
the victory was overwhelmed by the agony of another 
tragedy in Irish history — the great famine of 1845. 

I fell into trouble in America by saying that the 
English were not responsible at least for that act of 
nature, which was caused by the blight of the potato 
crop, upon which the main bulk of the people lived. And 
perhaps my critics were right in saying that, though we 
did not cause the blight, the famine itself would not 
have come if the Irish people had not been reduced to 
such a single source of life by our brutalities. Indeed, 
they were right. We cannot even claim that as com- 
fort to our conscience. It was a chapter as terrible as 
anything in human history. Thousands perished of 
starvation and disease. They fell dead on the roadsides, 
and children like living skeletons climbed about the 
corpses of their mothers until they too died. One 
woman went mad and ate her own child. The Irish 
people fled from their own island as though it were 
plague-stricken, as indeed it was. They crowded into 
19 281 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

any kind of vessel which would carry them to America, 
and many died in the holds before they could reach the 
promised land. The tide of emigration which then 
began ceased only for a spell when war broke out in 
1914, and the population of Ireland dwindled down in 
every decade, as these figures show: 

1841 8,170,000 

1851 6,555,000 

1861 5,790,000 

1871 5,410,000 

1881 5,170,000 

1891 4,700,000 

1901 4,450,000 

1911 4,390,000 

The figures for 192 1 will perhaps never be known, for 
the Census was opposed by Sinn Fein. It is certain, 
however, that they show an increase over 191 1, on 
account of the ban upon emigration by the leaders of 
the Irish Republican Army, who wished to retain Irish 
youth for their guerrilla warfare. 

These figures of depopulation tell a tragic tale, yet 
the significance of them is exaggerated by Irish writers, 
for if there had been no famine, the lure of America 
would have led to a great emigration from a little island 
not large enough to support its population after inten- 
sive agriculture had been replaced by cattle farming 
after the repeal of the corn laws. Nevertheless, in its 
first phase it was due to famine. 

What is the use of raking up that old, old history? . . . 
Because unless we remind ourselves from time to 
time of its leading facts, we cannot begin to under- 
stand the things that have happened in these recent 
years. What I have told in a few pages is but the 
outline of the story which in Ireland is celebrated in all 
its details of horror — and they are horrible — written 

282 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

and rewritten, read and reread in history books and 
romances, told and retold with wrath, and tears, and 
pity, and pride (pride in the Irish spirit of resistance, 
its unbreakable spirit through the centuries), in every 
Irish school, among every Irish group of "intellectuals," 
and by every Irish priest. All that black drama is in 
the background of the Irish mind, as a tradition stronger 
than all modern influence, as a national heritage of the 
soil which inspires all their folk songs, and as a passion 
which may burn low at times but is ready to flame up 
again when the embers are stirred. 

It burned low, that old passion of remembrance, some 
years before the war. There was almost a chance of 
its dying out at the end of the last century, when the 
Irish peasants were doing well and liberty was no longer 
outraged. But at that very time of increasing prosperity 
there was a renaissance of Irish culture, which began to 
stir up the embers — poets like W. B. Yeats and George 
Russell, historians like Barry O'Brien and Gavin Duffy, 
and a group of brilliant young men, both Protestant 
and Catholic, called back to the past and summoned 
up its ghosts. At first it was a purely literary move- 
ment. The Gaelic League was started to revive the 
Irish language and literature. Irish literary societies 
were established in many cities. Irish art and music, 
from the tenth century onward, were rediscovered and 
made popular. All that intellectual activity, not 
rebellious in its purpose, brilliant and scholarly in its 
expression, accepted with sympathy and enthusiasm by 
English students, was a new flowering time of the Irish 
spirit, revealing anew its wonderful endurance and its 
great sources of inspiration. But it awakened the old 
national instincts, and opened the old wounds so that 
they bled afresh. 

Another thing happened, not without tragic con- 
sequences in the future. The Irish priesthood had 

283 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

formerly received its training outside Ireland, in Eng- 
land, in France, and other countries, where these young 
men, the sons of small Irish farmers for the most part, 
broadened their vision of life, and realized that Ireland 
was not the only country in the world nor the one which 
had all the troubles. But the Catholic hierarchy 
established Maynooth as the training college for Irish 
priests and it became the training ground also for Sinn 
Fein. For there, in an Irish atmosphere, among Irish 
books, meeting none but Irish minds, these candidates 
for the priesthood were closed in from the outside world 
and became intensely national and introspective. The 
woes of Ireland in the past worked in their brains. 
The glory of Ireland a thousand years ago was their 
starting point in historical vision. The martyrdom of 
Catholic Ireland in the days of the penal laws fired them 
with their own faith and enthusiasm. The crimes of 
England burned also in their hearts again, and in their 
narrow sphere of life they could not dissociate the past 
from the present in their view of English character. 
Those young men became the parish priests of Ireland, 
the teachers in the schools, the leaders of every little 
group of adult scholars, the chairmen of political meet- 
ings, and the dominating influence in social and religious 
life of rural districts. It was they above all who re- 
vived old memories and, with them, their bitterness and 
their hate. Afterward, when Sinn Fein replaced the 
old Nationalists and raised the Republican flag, it was 
the priests from Maynooth who gave a spiritual sanc- 
tion to the guerrilla war, inflamed the ardors of Irish 
boys, comforted the wounded and the prisoners, ab- 
solved those condemned to execution, and promised 
the crown of martyrdom to those who died for Ireland's 
sake. It was no harder for them to reconcile their 
faith in Christ with this way of warfare than for our 
own chaplains to reconcile theirs with the endless killing 

284 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

of Germans — though how it was done in either case was 
hard to understand by many simple men who believed 
that Christ's message was one of peace and charity 
rather than war and hate, at least among people who 
professed to worship the same God. 

The intensity with which the Irish mind has been 
fixed upon the tragedy of Irish history has a morbid 
effect not unlike the "persecution mania" of advanced 
melancholia. To hear an Irishman talk of all the woes 
of the distressful isle, one might imagine that other 
people — and especially the English — enjoyed full liberty 
of self-government, a human code of laws, and great 
material prosperity throughout those centuries when 
Ireland was under the tyranny of a despotic Power, 
miserably impoverished, and crushed by the brutality 
of the penal laws. Nothing can ever excuse the abomi- 
nable treatment of Ireland by English kings and states- 
men prior to the Victorian era, and I shall write nothing 
to whitewash that black injustice, but the Irish people 
should broaden the horizon of their imagination by a 
wider knowledge of world history, including that of 
England. At the time when Catholics in Ireland 
were being hunted for their faith, there was no mercy to 
Catholics in England. Their priests were chased, 
tortured, and killed, and by unrelenting severity the 
old faith was destroyed throughout the length and 
breadth of the land. The peasants of England were 
hardly better than serfs, and had no land of their own, 
but were the hired men of the tenant farmers, paid 
wretched wages and thrust into miserable hovels. 
Even as late as the year of the last European war the 
farm laborers of Somersetshire and many parts of 
England were paid no more than fourteen shillings a 
week, upon which they had to keep their families. As 
for liberty, it needed a long and desperate struggle 
before the English masses were able to vote as free men 

285 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

and to share in the making of the laws which governed 
them. Chartist riots, the "Peterloo" massacre, the 
threat and fear of revolutions in the early nineteenth 
century, preceded the granting of the franchise to the 
working classes. In the industrial era which followed 
the invention of the steam engine and the "spinning 
jenny," it is doubtful whether the life of Irish peasants 
in the poorest parts of Connaught, and in the worst 
period of English misrule and cruelty, was not prefer- 
able by far to that of the factory hands in such towns as 
Manchester, Bolton, Oldham, Wigan, and Sheffield. 
The Irish peasant, if he did not die in the famine of '45, 
lived at least a human life, under God's free sky. He 
preserved his manhood and dignity of soul, and his 
women and children kept their beauty and grace. But 
in the industrial towns of England, men and women and 
little children endured a worse form of slavery than that 
of ancient Rome, suffered more cruelty in their bodies 
and souls, and were stunted and made inhuman by the 
hardships and filthy conditions of their life. They 
worked fourteen hours and more a day in overcrowded 
and insanitary mills, without sufficient light and air 
for human beings, and their children were made slaves 
of the machines and werea bominably ill used before 
they had known the first joys of childhood or any kind 
of joy. Their hovels were worse than Irish hovels, 
more foul, more pestilential, and the hard-faced manu- 
facturers of the North and Midlands were more cruel 
taskmasters than the Anglo-Irish landlords, who in 
many cases were kindly and easy-going men. Where 
was the liberty of the English folk in the eighteenth 
century? It is our ignorance of history which pretends 
they had the right or power to govern themselves. They 
were ruled, brutally, by the same people who made 
the tragedy of Ireland. The Irish penal laws were 
infamous. So also were the penal laws of England in 

286 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

that cruel century of history which preceded the Act of 
Union, and afterward. 

As I write, I have by my side a document which I 
picked up by hazard in the Old Bailey of London, 
before a new Court of Justice replaced the former 
building. It reveals in a blinding light the social state 
of England in the Napoleonic era. It is a list of one 
hundred convicts "embarked on board the Morly for 
New South Wales from the Dolphin Hulk at Chatham, 
this 29th day of July 1829, pursuant to the Right Honour- 
able Robert Peel's order of the 15th day of July 1829." 
Most of the men were under middle age, many of them 
young boys, and all of them were sentenced to terms 
varying from fourteen years to penal servitude for life 
and transportation to Botany Bay, for petty crimes 
which now would be dealt with under the First Offend- 
ders Act, without imprisonment. 

Thomas Cook, a boy of fifteen, gets a life sentence 
(which in many cases meant a death sentence, as all 
know who have read the story of those prison ships on 
their way to Australia) — for stealing an apron. 

Peter Haigh, eighteen years of age, is sentenced to 
penal servitude for life for stealing a piece of printed 
cotton. 

For stealing a candlestick, Thomas Porter, sixteen 
years of age, is sentenced to fourteen years and trans- 
portation. For stealing a piece of worsted, James 
Jefferies, aged seventeen, is sentenced to fourteen years 
and transportation; and so on throughout the list. For 
breaking a threshing machine (in the time of the machin- 
ery riots); for stealing handkerchiefs, or bread when 
they were starving, girls, as well as boys, were sentenced 
to death and hanged in batches as late as the early 
nineteenth century, in Merrie England. Looking back 
upon that time, I fancy Ireland was a happier isle in 
spite of all her misery. It was a cruel time everywhere 

287 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

and until recent years most of us believed that we had 
got beyond it, to an age of greater human kindness. 
But the European war, and history that has happened 
afterward, spoiled that illusion, with many others. 

When all is said and done, England used the enlighten- 
ment that came to her in happier times, to make amends 
in Ireland. Liberal thought in England did at last 
prevail as our people struggled forward to greater liberty 
of their own, and at last regained it. The Irish are not 
grateful, and pretend that we have behaved always 
toward them with the same intolerance and the same 
selfishness, but that is not the verdict of impartial his- 
tory. The series of Land Acts which have enabled 
the Irish peasantry to possess their own soil by means 
of English credits were generous in their inspiration 
and beneficent in their result. Nor is it true to say, as 
Irish writers say, that those concessions were forced 
upon the House of Commons by the power of the 
Nationalist votes, for though Mr. Gladstone's first 
Home Rule bill of 1886 may have been influenced by 
that thought, the great L?nd Act of 1903 was passed by 
a Parliament in which Unionists were in a great majority 
over Liberals and Nationalists combined. 



The story of the land in Ireland is, of course, the key 
to many of her historical troubles, from the time the 
Normans seized most of it, and the best of it, from the 
Irish chieftains. Throughout the centuries the people 
were mainly agricultural, and it was the repeal of the 
Corn Laws in the middle of the nineteenth century 
which diminished wheat-growing in Ireland (as well 
as in England) and changed it to a cattle-raising 
country. This had an immense effect upon the small 

288 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

tenant farmers, for the landlords desired to get rid of 
them from their holdings, in order to increase the pas- 
ture land. Evictions took place with pitiable scenes, 
and, unable to get work in factories like the English 
peasants who were also pushed off the land, their only 
chance was emigration to the United States. That, 
as well as the famine, was, as I have said, the cause of 
the human tide flowing from Ireland to America. 

It was in 1870 that a first attempt was made to reform 
the miserable land system of Ireland, and the tenant 
was recognized in a limited way as part owner of the 
soil on which he labored. Later, in 1881, Mr. Gladstone 
still further improved the status of the Irish tenant 
farmer by an Act known as the Three F's — Fair Rent, 
Free Sale, and Fixity of Tenure. But the beginning 
of prosperity in Ireland was made a reality by the Land 
Acts of 1891 and 1905, founded by George Wyndham, 
a descendant of the Irish Geraldines and a brilliant, 
sympathetic man, under Mr. Balfour's administration, 
enabling tenants to purchase their holdings on money 
advanced by the British government to a special Land 
Stock, bearing interest at 2^ per cent. Compulsory 
powers of purchase were given to the commissions 
appointed to administer these Acts, so that landlords 
could not refuse to part with their soil when it was 
desperately needed. 

The total amount of money advanced by us for land 
purchase in Ireland from 1870 to 1919 was a hun- 
dred and five and a half million pounds — an immense 
amount of money, even now when our minds have 
been stunned by the grotesque figures of war debts. 
Nor were the Irish people asked to pay a higher interest 
when by war exhaustion England was forced to beg and 
borrow. While we were raising loans at 6 per cent, 
we were lending to Ireland at less than 3 per cent. 
In addition to the hundred and five and a half millions 

289 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

mentioned above, we advanced nearly five million 
pounds to the Irish rural district councils for the build- 
ing of laborers' cottages. 

The world ought to know these facts, and that is 
why I am writing them — in case a few people in the 
world may read them. For it is fair and just to say 
that the English people had made some amends at least, 
not inconsiderable, not ungenerous, for their bad treat- 
ment of Ireland, and that in material prosperity as well 
as in the affairs of local government they were already 
a world away from the misery that followed the famine 
of '45. This cannot be disputed with any honesty by 
Irish writers. It is undeniable, and confirmed by many 
of their own leaders. Take, for instance, words spoken 
by John Redmond, a year after the beginning of the 
Great War. Though he lost favor with his own people 
before dying with a broken heart, no Irishman, if he has 
any honesty, will deny that he was a great patriot and a 
great gentleman, whose whole life was devoted to the 
country he loved. It was John Redmond who made 
the following statement in Australia, comparing the 
condition of Ireland with what it was thirty years 
earlier. 

I went to Australia to make an appeal on behalf of an enslaved, 
famine-hunted, despairing people, a people in the throes of semi- 
revolution, bereft of all political liberties and engaged in a life-and- 
death struggle with the system of a most brutal and drastic coercion. 
Only thirty-three or thirty-four years have passed since then, but 
what a revolution has occurred in the interval. To-day the people, 
broadly speaking, own the soil; to-day the laborers live in decent 
habitations; to-day there is absolute freedom in the local government 
and the local taxation of the country; to-day we have the widest 
Parliament in the municipal franchise; to-day we know that the 
evicted tenants who are the wounded soldiers of the land war have 
been restored to their homes, or to other homes as good as those 
from which they had been originally driven. We know that the 
congested districts, the scene of some of the most awful horrors of 

290 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

the old famine days, have been transformed, that the farms have been 
enlarged, decent dwellings have been provided, and a new spirit of 
hope and independence is to-day among the people. We know 
that in the towns legislation has been passed facilitating the housing 
of the working classes. So far as the town tenants are concerned, 
we have this consolation, that we have passed for Ireland an Act 
whereby they are protected against arbitrary eviction, and are given 
compensation not only for disturbance from their homes, but for 
the good-will of the business they had created, a piece of legislation 
far in advance of anything obtained for the town tenants of England. 
I may add, far in advance of any legislation obtained for the town 
tenants of any other country. We know that we have at least won 
educational freedom in university education for most of the youth 
of Ireland, and we know that in primary and standard education the 
thirty-four years that have passed have witnessed an enormous 
advance in efficiency and in the means provided for bringing effi- 
ciency about. To-day we have a system of old-age pensions in Ire- 
land whereby every old man and woman over seventy is saved from 
the workhouse, free to spend their last days in comparative comfort. 
We have a system of national industrial insurance which provides 
for the health of the people and makes it impossible for the poor 
hard-working man and woman, when sickness comes to the door, 
to be carried away to the workhouse hospital, and makes it certain 
that they will receive decent, Christian treatment during their 
illness. 

In her material, and, indeed, in her spiritual state, 
Ireland, therefore, was no longer wretched and down- 
trodden, but well fed, gaining in wealth, with a sense 
of well-being. So it was before the war; and after the 
war, and throughout the war, Ireland was prosperous as 
few other countries, and suffered none of the privations 
which came to England. At a time when middle-class 
English households were strictly rationed, when middle- 
class English mothers were standing in long queues in 
the dark, wet days, to get their allowances of meat or 
groceries, when milk was difficult to get for babes, 
when butter could not be got, and eggs had disappeared, 
the Irish folk had all these good things in rich abun- 

291 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

dance. Their imports jumped up, from seventy-three 
million pounds sterling in 1914, to a hundred and twenty- 
six million pounds in 191 8, and their exports from 
seventy-seven million pounds sterling in 1914 to a 
hundred and fifty-two millions in 191 8. In 1916 the 
value of cattle and beef exported from Ireland to Great 
Britain far exceeded the value imported from any other 
country. From Ireland it amounted to £20,580,000; 
from the Argentine, £12,785,000, and from the United 
States, £3,520,000. As an exporter of bacon, hams, 
pork, and pigs, Ireland stood second to the United 
States. Her exports of poultry and eggs to Great 
Britain were higher than those from any other country. 
In butter she stood second to Denmark, and in oats 
third to the United States and the Argentine. Her in- 
crease in private wealth during the years of war is shown 
to some extent by the Irish Bank deposits, which were 
£61,955,000 in 1914, and £91,361,000 in 1917. 

Nobody in England begrudges Ireland this advance 
in prosperity. It does not pay back for centuries of 
poverty due to misrule, and for many extortions of 
Anglo-Irish lords and gentlemen. But at least it is a 
proof that the evil regime had ended and that Ireland 
was well on the road to national welfare. They had no 
need to whine about their misery, for they were not 
miserable. 

I, for one, however, understand that material well- 
being is not the greatest thing in life, and that the 
satisfaction of national sentiment, racial pride, liberty 
of self-government, are desires of the human heart 
stronger and nobler, if nobly expressed, than wealth 
or comfort. The Irish were still denied their old claim 
to rule themselves as a separate people, and material 
progress did not weaken, but rather strengthened, their 
passion for political liberty; and the European war, 
which intensified all ideals, hopes, fears, hatreds, and 

292 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

other emotions of men and women in the whole world, 
caused a profound stirring up of passion in Ireland. 



VI 

Before this happened, other things had happened 
which were fatal links in the chain of Irish tragedy. A 
Home Rule Act (limited and imperfect, it is true) had 
at last been placed upon the statute book, after more 
than half a century of political strife, and Ulster had 
refused to acknowledge it. 

The history of that half century of struggle in the 
House of Commons by a solid block of Irish members, 
under leaders like Parnell and Redmond, preceding 
that Act by Asquith's government, is too long and 
complicated to summarize, and is anyhow the record 
of a dismal and depressing drama. The Irish Nation- 
alists had to fight against a dead weight of English 
prejudice throughout the Victorian era, which seemed 
invincible in its smugness and self-complacency, un- 
breakable in its intolerance and arrogance. The Queen 
herself symbolized, in a royal way, the narrow bigotry 
of the English middle class, which only broadened and 
mellowed to Liberal ideas when the Education Act of 
1870 and other enlightening influences had begun to 
operate. The new imperialism of the Cecil Rhodes 
type, popularized by Kipling, made a political creed 
by Chamberlain, helped later to create an atmosphere 
of intolerance toward Irish claims for self-government. 
Religious prejudice acted also against Irish interests, 
for the Protestant cry of "No Popery" still had power 
to stir popular passion and to raise votes against any 
concessions to a Catholic people, lest Home Rule should 
spell Rome Rule, with the Inquisition at work again, 
with new Bartholomew massacres, with Jesuits in dis- 
guise conspiring against the Protestant Crown, and 

293 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

with all the bogeys which still lurked in the memory 
of Puritan England from the days when the Catholic 
Church was regarded as "The Scarlet Woman" and 
"The Whore of Babylon. " 

Gradually that religious bigotry was softened by 
many influences which broke the spell of Victorianism 
—on one side the Oxford Movement, with its return to 
Catholic mysticism; on the other side the wave of 
agnosticism reflected in such popular books as Robert 
Elsmere by Mrs. Humphry Ward, the progress of 
science, and a wider knowledge of history. The group 
of Irish members in the House of Commons were defeated 
decade after decade by that solid wall of prejudice still 
existing in the mass psychology of mid-Victorian 
England; and their own faction fights, their utter dis- 
regard of English sensibilities, their own fanaticism, and 
the Celtic temperament which no Englishman could 
even dimly apprehend, destroyed their political strategy 
time and time again. Not even Gladstone's oratory, 
the fire of his spirit, his wizard spell over the imagina- 
tion of Liberal minds, could break down the sinister 
fears which belonged to the old Conservative instincts 
of the English people in their dealings with Catholic 
Ireland. Yet by a curious paradox, due to a privilege 
of caste stronger than religious sympathy, the English 
Catholics of the old aristocracy were as bitterly hostile 
to Irish Home Rule as the Protestants of the most 
Puritan type. 

One fatality dogged the efforts of the Irish Nation- 
alists to obtain victory by political pressure. Over 
and over again their chances were spoiled by the acts 
of crime committed by secret gangs in Ireland. Im- 
patient of political strategy, stirred by passionate 
incitements of Irish exiles in America, young Irishmen 
adopted terrorism as their weapon, and always it was 
double-edged, hurting their own cause most. The 

294 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

hedgerow murders and sinister conspiracies of Moon- 
lighters and Fenians hardened the English mind against 
any measure of Home Rule, made them stubborn against 
a plea for liberty by a people who used American dollars 
to organize assassination, cattle maiming, and boy- 
cotting. 

Another source of anger and of political hatred against 
the Irish Nationalists was the manner in which their 
block in the House of Commons used their voting powers 
as a threat or as a bribe to English political parties. 
The Irish vote could turn out a government or wreck a 
bill which had nothing to do with Irish interests, and 
with relentless strategy the Irish leaders made use of 
this power whenever it suited their purpose, utterly 
indifferent to the welfare of the English people. That, 
at least, was a nagging thought among our politicians, 
though it is doubtful whether the Irish party thwarted 
any important measures which lay outside the interests 
of Ireland. Be that as it may, there were many people 
who cried out to be rid of that hostile, alien group on 
the Irish benches, with their cynical wit and mocking 
laughter, so that we ourselves might enjoy Home Rule 
for England. 

It was John Redmond, as leader of the Nationalists, 
who at last succeeded in securing a majority in the House 
of Commons for Irish Home Rule, so winning victory, 
it seemed, after the long and uphill struggle. 

That was after something like a political revolution 
in England, which, with the help of the Irish votes, had 
destroyed the veto of the House of Lords by pressure 
brought to bear upon the King to create sufficient peers 
to overthrow them if they did not surrender their own 
power. They surrendered at the eleventh hour, and as 
one of the first fruits of victory for the Liberals in the 
Commons, the Home Rule bill became law. But two 
things happened to spill these fruits out of the basket 

295 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

of hope. One was the menace of civil war, the other 
was the coming of the Great War. 



VII 

Looking back at the recent horrors in Ireland, it 
seems to me, and to most men I know, unless they are 
blinded by passion, that they are directly due to what 
happened in Ulster before the passing of the Home Rule 
bill. What happened there was the raking up of old 
passions and bigotries by men like Carson and F. E. 
Smith (who is now Lord Birkenhead and Lord Chan- 
cellor of England), and the public organization of a 
rebel army whose avowed purpose was to resist an Act 
of Parliament by force of arms, to defy the King's 
authority, and, if need be, the King's troops. It is 
true that they proclaimed their loyalty, but one banner 
which flaunted across a Belfast street was not con- 
vincing in its patriotism. It said, "We would rather 
be ruled by the Kaiser than by the Pope of Rome." 
In view of what happened on August 4, 1914, that refer- 
ence to the Kaiser was at least unfortunate. It is also 
hard now to remember that the rifles which were smug- 
gled into Ulster for the arming of the volunteers were 
mostly of German manufacture. 

I saw a good deal of Belfast in those days, and what 
I saw I did not like. I saw an ugly intolerance of mind 
among the leaders of the Orange lodges toward their 
fellow Irishmen of Catholic faith, which startled me 
by its mingled quality of sheer brutality and religious 
fanaticism. One decade of the twentieth century 
had passed (and the European war had not yet come 
with new revelations of human cruelty), yet in this era 
of enlightenment and civilization men of good stand- 
ing, ministers of religion, great lawyers of the English 
bar were talking stuff which might have been uttered, 

296 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

in better language, by Oliver Cromwell himself — stuff 
belonging to the old, dark bigotries of the Thirty Years' 
War or the Rise of the Dutch Republic; stuff of igno- 
rance, of hatred, and of cruelty which left me aghast, 
because I believed we had passed beyond all that. This 
verbosity of intolerance was translated into acts, as I 
saw with my own eyes in back streets of Belfast and in 
the neighborhood of Queen's Island, where Protestant 
laborers fell upon Catholic workingmen and kicked 
them to death, or bruised and battered them so that 
the hospitals were busy with these casualties. At that 
time, anyhow, the Catholic Irish were not the aggres- 
sors, nor in places where there were Protestant minori- 
ties did they take vengeance by reprisals. 

In March of 1914 a large consignment of arms was 
landed at Larne without let or hindrance from govern- 
ment officials, thereby persuading John Redmond to 
encourage recruiting of his own volunteers. But when 
in July the Irish volunteers tried to distribute arms 
they were opposed by troops who afterward fired on an 
unarmed crowd in Dublin. 

After the swearing of the "Covenant," the drilling 
of battalions, and the establishment of a "Provisional 
Government" by the Ulster leaders, there happened 
the incident at the Curragh when Gough and other 
cavalry officers gave clear notice that they would refuse 
to obey orders if they were called upon to disarm the 
Ulster volunteers. If any man was a rebel, Carson was 
a rebel. If any body of men were conspiring with armed 
forces to defeat the authority of the Crown and Parlia- 
ment, those men were the Ulster volunteers. Yet no 
action was taken against Sir Edward Carson or his 
riflemen, though a search was made for arms in southern 
Ireland when the Catholics raised their own volunteers 
in defense of the threats of war by Ulster. 

The Great War came, and for a time washed out all 

20 297 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

smaller strife in a sea of blood. The cavalry officers of 
the Curragh camp went out first of all to meet the Uhlans 
of Germany. Irishmen of north and south, Protestants 
and Catholics, offered themselves to defend their 
country against the common enemy. 

"I say to the government," proclaimed John Red- 
mond, "that they may to-morrow withdraw every one 
of their troops from Ireland. Ireland will be defended 
by her armed sons from invasion, and for that purpose 
the armed Catholics in the south will be only too glad to 
join with the armed Protestant Ulster men." 

It was the great chance to end the historic feud be- 
tween Great Britain and Ireland. Greater men than 
we had would have seized it, calling upon the heroic 
spirit of Ireland, with a full and fair pledge of self-govern- 
ment as a sister nation. Instead, pettifogging minds 
at the War Office got to work, ignoring or thwarting all 
plans of Irish recruiting in the south and west, and 
playing up to Ulster as the only "loyalists." The 
Catholic Irish wanted to fight in their own brigades, 
under their own flag, and with their priests as chaplains. 
Why not, in God's name? Instead, Irish volunteers 
were drafted into English battalions, Irish gentlemen 
were not allowed to command their own men. All 
offers of raising bodies of Irish youth were discouraged. 
Even Lloyd George admitted afterward that he was 
aghast at the methods adopted toward Irish recruiting, 
and confessed that it seemed as if "malignancy" had 
been at work. He did not add that those sinister in- 
fluences were the work of his own colleagues. 

The first fires of enthusiasm were damped down, and 
died out. They were put clean out for the Catholic 
Irish when Sir Edward Carson, their avowed enemy, the 
leader of the Ulster volunteers, the rebel, was made a 
Cabinet Minister, with a seat in the War Council. It 
seemed to them a deliberate affront, a public declaration 

298 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

of partisanship with those who had sworn to resist 
Home Rule. On our side it was a colossal blunder, 
worse than a crime, and showed an ignorance of Irish 
psychology only equal to the German ignorance of 
our own. 

Meanwhile a hundred thousand Catholic Irish were 
fighting for the liberty of civilization and for the safety 
of Great Britain. At first they believed that they were 
fighting also for the liberty of their own little isle, but 
gradually that belief left them and they were sadder 
and wiser men. Yet they went on fighting, gallantly, 
desperately, in the Dardanelles, on the western front, 
in Palestine, cut off from their own folk, reinforced by 
drafts from English battalions, commanded by officers 
not of their faith or race. 

I was often with the troops of the 16th Irish Divi- 
sion in France and Flanders, because I wanted to give 
them what honor I could, by recording their valor and 
their loyalty at a time when they felt isolated from their 
own folk and from ours. They played their pipes for 
me in old French barns outside of Arras, and these 
Irish lads made whimsical jokes about the Jerry boys, 
as they called the Germans, and about their way of 
life and death. I remember one boy sitting in the straw 
below the rafters of a barn, who told me in a fine brogue 
that the place swarmed with rats who sat up on their 
hind legs and sang "God save Ireland" — "And sure," 
he said, "it's the truth I'm after telling you!" I saw 
them go into battle at Guillemont and Guinchy "when 
the Jerry boys ran so fast you couldn't see their tails 
for dust," and come out again across the shell-ravaged 
fields through the roar of guns, with all their officers 
gone, and sergeants or corporals leading little groups of 
tired, staggering men who were the few that were left 
out of the strong companies that had marched into that 
hell on earth. I stood by the side of their brigadier, 

299 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

not an Irishman, but a lover of these boys in his com- 
mand, and the tears ran down his face as he shouted 
words of praise to them. 

"Bravo, Connaughts! Bravo, Munsters! You did 
damn well, Dublins!" 

At the sight of him standing there, at those words of 
his, they pulled themselves up, turned eyes left, were 
glad of this tribute to a heroism not surpassed in the 
"war to end war," as we called it in our simplicity. 

The Irish division did not get a fair deal. It was 
left in the trenches month after month, shifted from 
one part of the line to another, without a rest, and in 
August of 1917, in Flanders, up against the German 
pillboxes at "Beck House" and "Borry Farm" it was 
just a massacre. They were alongside the Ulster men, 
who shared their sacrifice, and with whom they were 
comrades, forgetful, there, in France and Flanders, of 
political and religious feuds, but Irishmen together. 
Left for three weeks in ditches of death, under a cease- 
less storm of German gunfire, each of these two Irish 
divisions lost nearly two thousand men and over a 
hundred and fifty officers before they were sent "over 
the top" in a great assault. And then without mercy 
for their losses they were pushed into a battle which 
cost them another two thousand men for each division, 
and almost the last of their officers. Some of their 
battalions lost 64, and even 66 per cent of their 
fighting strength. Some companies were almost anni- 
hilated. It was not war. It was a murder of men 
who fought to the extreme limits of human heroism 
in impossible conditions and in obedience to outrageous 
orders. 

For General Hickey, their divisional commander, I 
had a warm regard. He had a charming Irish way 
and was proud of his men, but I think he failed in getting 
fair play for them and allowed them to be used too 

300 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

ruthlessly by our High Command. Both divisions 
were remade by scraping up drafts of men from conva- 
lescent camps and from English depots. In the German 
offensive of 1918 they were holding the line in the Fifth 
Army front, and fought again until they were almost 
destroyed. On the outskirts of Amiens, after a terrible 
week against the overwhelming tide, General Nugent, 
commanding the Ulster division, was asked by a 
French general coming up to our relief, to make another 
attack while the French troops detrained. General 
Nugent's answer to the message was a revelation of 
his tragedy. "Tell your general," he said, "that I 
have only three hundred men who can stand up" — 
three hundred out of a whole division! — "but they will 
attack again." 

Any man who denies the valor of the Irish in the 
war is a liar. They had not the same discipline as the 
English (their temperament was different), some of 
their officers were not so well trained, but their courage 
was magnificent and their spirit heroic. As an English- 
man, I am glad to pay them this tribute in truth and 
honesty, and especially because, in Ireland, that re- 
bellion in Easter week of 1916, before the battles of 
the Somme, before their agony in those fields and in 
Flanders, cut them off from their own people and put 
them to a supreme test of loyalty. 

VIII 

For that rebellion there is no excuse. Not even the 
tragic heritage of Irish history, nor our own stupidities 
in dealing with a temperamental people, nor Carson's 
sinister influence, palliates the black treachery of that 
act. It was treachery not only against the English 
people, who, whatever the acts of their government, 
had been patient with Ireland, generously inclined, 

301 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

but treachery to civilization itself, to our French allies, 
to the whole code of honor. The enemy was desper- 
ately strong against us. We were hard pressed, and the 
Irish troops themselves, as I have told, were being mowed 
down by German gun fire and German machine-gun 
bullets. If Germany had won, more would have gone 
down than England. Irish liberty would have gone 
down with ours. Europe would have been Prussianized, 
and there would have been no mercy under German 
Pickelhauben for Irish rebels. The Prussian does not 
believe in rebels when they have served his purpose. 
He has a short way with them. The British Empire 
would have been broken up, and the ruin of England 
would not have helped Ireland, but would have made her 
poverty-stricken with us, and fellow slaves under the 
yoke of a real tyranny. The Irish rebellion was mad- 
ness as well as badness. 

Of the complicity of the Irish conspirators with our 
enemy there is no doubt. Roger Casement was not 
the only man in correspondence with Germany. Through 
Irish-Americans and Count BernstorfF in Washington, 
the leaders of the rebellion were in direct touch with the 
German government. Their whole plans were based 
upon German assistance, as P. H. Pearse admitted in a 
letter written the night before his execution: 

The help I expected from Germany failed; the British sank the 
ships. 

Judge Cohalan in the United States requested Count 
BernstorfF to forward the following message to the 
German Foreign Office: 

The Irish revolt can only succeed if assisted by Germany. Other- 
wise England will be able to crush it, although after a severe struggle. 
Assistance required. There should be an air raid on England and a 
naval attack timed to coincide with the rising, followed by a landing of 
troops and munitions and also of some officers, perhaps from a warship. 

302 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

It might then be possible to close the Irish harbors against England, 
set up bases for submarines, and cut off food export to England. A 
successful rising may decide the war. 

John Devoy was the leader of the revolutionary plot 
in the United States, and in close and constant commu- 
nication with the German ambassador at Washington. 
On February 18, 1916, Count Bernstorff attached the 
following message surreptitiously to a note regarding 
the Lusitania negotiations, sanctioned and passed 
through by the State Department of the American 
government: 

The Irish leader, John Devoy, informs me that rising is to begin 
in Ireland on Easter Sunday. Please send arms to (arrive at) 
Limerick, west coast of Ireland, between Good Friday and Easter 
Sunday. To put it off longer is impossible. Let me know if help 
may be expected from Germany. 

Bernstorff. 

There is one mitigating fact in the indictment of the 
Irish people regarding the rebellion which broke out in 
Dublin during that Easter week and led to the death 
of many English soldiers, many Irish boys, hundreds 
of casualties on both sides, the destruction of the best 
part of Dublin from artillery fire, and the abomination 
of martial law. Its outbreak was bitterly condemned 
and resented by the majority of Irish citizens, who re- 
garded it, for the first day or two at least, as an act of 
criminal madness. From many sources of information, 
English as well as Irish, I have evidence of that. But 
when its failure was assured and large numbers of Irish 
lads and their leaders were surrounded by superior 
forces and strong artillery, without a dog's chance of 
escape, sentiment was intensely stirred and every 
Irish heart bled at the thought of their inevitable death 
unless they surrendered. Whatever the original folly 
or crime, all people must feel like that for their fellow 

303 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

countrymen, as we felt in the time of the Jameson 
raid. National sentiment, pity, horror, and then a flame 
of hatred swept over Ireland when, after the rebellion, 
the Irish prisons were crowded with captives to the 
number of one thousand eight hundred and forty, 
and fifteen of their leaders were picked out for the 
Bloody Assizes under General Maxwell, sentenced to 
death, and executed. According to all laws of all 
countries, those executions were justified. In compar- 
ison with what other countries would have done — 
Germany, France, even the United States — I think — 
we were mild in punishment. But if we had been more 
merciful we should have been more wise. Those men 
like Pearse, Macdonagh, and Connolly were not evil 
men in their nature, though they had done a mad, bad 
thing. They were men of lofty ideals, patriots and 
visionaries, though grievously misguided by fanaticism. 
We might have known that to execute them would 
make martyrs of them, and that the spirit of the Irish 
people would be flung into allegiance with the extrem- 
ists by their tragic deaths, by their last words of love 
for Ireland, by the tranquil courage with which they went 
to execution. It is knowledge of psychology which 
makes great statesmen and leaders. A man like Gen- 
eral Maxwell has as much knowledge of psychology as a 
German drill sergeant. He has the brass-hat brain. 
Our own statesmen were not big enough for generosity, 
not brave enough to risk an error on the side of mercy. 
They went by the book of the old code of law, and 
stood by "the need of justice." Any schoolboy might 
have quoted Shakespeare to them for a text — 

The quality of mercy is not strained . . . 

And earthly power doth then show likest God's, 
When mercy seasons justice. . . . 
304 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

From the lowest point of view, the low cunning of 
political strategy, we should have done better to have 
kept those men in prison for a while, to have treated 
them with chivalry, as now and again in the past English 
kings treated rebellious subjects, and then have called 
to the heart of Ireland for loyalty on generous terms. 
So General Botha dealt with the rebellion of De Wet 
in the early days of the war. For the leaders there 
were short terms of imprisonment, then a general 
amnesty. "We want to put that out of our memories," 
he said. That way might have failed in Ireland, for 
the Irish are a Celtic people and many of them are not 
easily forgetful of what they think is unfair and are cynical 
of generous dealing, which they mistake for weakness, 
and incurably suspicious. Mercy might have failed to 
win their thanks. But lack of mercy was bound to fail. 

It did fail most horribly. The most moderate men 
and women in Ireland revolted against the ''martyrdom" 
of the Sinn Fein leaders, and the Irish Republican Army, 
as the Irish volunteers now called themselves, received 
recruits from the great body of Irish youth. On the 
western front many Irish soldiers, still fighting for us, 
dedicated themselves anew to Irish freedom, and 
after the war, if they had the luck, or misfortune, to 
live, joined the ranks of the rebel forces. 

Abortive attempts were made by Mr. Asquith, in the 
last months of his office as Prime Minister, to reshape 
the government of Ireland, and he appointed Lloyd 
George to negotiate with John Redmond and Sir Edward 
Carson, in order that the first principles of a new bill 
might be agreed upon. Redmond obtained a written 
document which outlined the government proposals, 
for setting up an Irish Parliament, with a responsible 
Irish executive, and arranging to leave out the six 
counties of Ulster during the war, upon the ending of 
which the problem of partition would be raised again 

305 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

before a council of the Empire. In the meantime the 
original number of Irish members would sit at West- 
minster. These proposals were carried at a Nation- 
alist convention, and accepted by the Ulster Council 
in June, 1916. Later, however, Lord Lansdowne, as 
leader of the Unionist peers, refused to agree to the 
terms of Redmond's document, Sir Edward Carson 
interpreted the government promises as meaning the 
permanent partition of Ireland, and Bonar Law repu- 
diated the binding nature of the pledge given to the 
Irish leader, so the poor John Redmond knew that his 
own people would have their worst suspicions confirmed 
and would repudiate his leadership. 

The war was still going on and the minds of people 
in England, Scotland, and Wales had no room for polit- 
ical strife in Ireland, but were obsessed, and agonized, 
and deadened by the continuing and increasing slaugh- 
ter in France and Flanders, without a hope or illusion 
left of rapid victory. In spite of tremendous battles, 
with their long death rolls, our generals did not seem 
to get in sight of any promised land. They called for 
more men, and still more, for the dreadful sacrifice. 
Intrigue was rife at home, because of long disappoint- 
ment, and criticism of the conduct of the war, leading 
to belief that a change of leadership might quicken the 
chance of victory. By a political intrigue in which 
Bonar Law and Lloyd George were the principals, with 
a Canadian journalist and publicity man — the present 
Lord Beaverbrook — as chief wirepuller — Asquith was 
unseated and Lloyd George became Prime Minister of 
the Coalition, dependent on the support of Carson and 
Bonar Law, with their Orange fanaticism still unabated, 
and on the backing of press favorites to whom he prom- 
ised largesse in the future, which later he richly paid, so 
that Fleet Street is now paved with coronets and its 
purlieus infested with barons. 

306 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

Lloyd George had great qualities of leadership which 
might have made him more powerful than those who kept 
the rein upon his finer instincts. He had imagination, 
sympathy, generous impulses, splendid audacity, re- 
vealed from time to time in spite of all those hide-bound 
pettifogging brains which surrounded him closely and 
watchfully and suspiciously, and whose power over 
other people of their kind was able to thwart him or 
change his direction, whenever he tried to be free of them. 

So it was in his dealings with Ireland. His first 
action was maganimous and he set free large numbers 
of young Irishmen who had been imprisoned since the 
rebellion of Easter week in 1916, though he refused to 
annul the sentences of those who were in penal servitude. 
But when Sinn Fein began to win by-elections — 
Count Plunkett being elected for Roscommon in Feb- 
ruary 1917 — he allowed himself to be influenced by the 
fears of his supporters and gave his consent to a new 
campaign of coercion, with wholesale arrests, house-to- 
house searches, imprisonment without trial, and all 
the rigors of military rule. In the House of Commons 
Major Willie Redmond made a moving and noble 
appeal for peaceful settlement by a quick and generous 
measure of self-government for Ireland. "In the name 
of God, we here, who are perhaps about to die, ask you 
to do that which largely induced us to leave our homes." 

I read that speech of Major Redmond's, much stirred 
by its pathos, when I was recording the daily routine of 
the war, and three months later, when I went among 
the Irish battalions on a great day of battle at Messines, 
I remembered his words, when an Irish soldier told me 
that "Major Willie" had been killed not far from where 
I stood, by Wytschaete Wood. A few days later I was 
present at his graveside in a convent garden when 
soldiers of Protestant Ulster and Catholic Ireland fired 
the last salute above his dust. He had died like many 

307 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

of his comrades in the vain hope that by their loyalty 
to the Empire Ireland might gain her heart's desire. 

But in Ireland and in England there was no reconciling 
spirit. Less in Ireland than in England, then, for once 
again prisoners were released — among them being De 
Valera, afterward appointed leader of Sinn Fein and 
President of the "Irish Republic" — and when an Irish 
convention was summoned to discuss a plan for the 
self-government of Ireland, within the Empire, by all 
parties of the Irish people, Sinn Fein refused to send 
representatives, having nailed its Republican flag to the 
mast. 

All through the autumn and winter of 1917 the Irish 
people became more and more skeptical of the conven- 
tion, as news reached them that Ulster was as irrecon- 
cilable as ever, and would not abate a jot of her claims 
to separation, for the sake of national unity. Yet 
under the chairmanship of Sir Horace Plunkett, a wise, 
devoted, and patriotic Irishman, the convention repre- 
sented all shades of opinion in Ireland, apart from Sinn 
Fein. Among its members were five Nationalists, five 
Ulster Unionists, three southern Unionists, four Cath- 
olic bishops, two bishops of the Church of Ireland, 
thirty-one chairmen of county councils, four mayors, 
eight urban councilors, seven labor representatives, 
and such great Irishmen as "A. E.," Sir Horace Windle, 
Lord MacDowell, Lord Desert, and Doctor Mahaffy, 
provost of Trinity College. 

They could not agree. Before the end, John Redmond 
resigned, and died of soul shock. Yet its report pre- 
sented to Lloyd George the faith and convictions of 
men who knew the psychology of their countrymen and 
who in many solemn and inspiring words proclaimed 
the age-long aspirations of Ireland to political liberty. 
They were mostly agreed to a Federal scheme which 
would give Ireland a constitution within the Empire, 

308 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

and there is hardly a doubt that even then a full promise 
of Dominion Home Rule for Ireland, with a temporary 
arrangement for Ulster, would have received the alle- 
giance of the great majority of Irish people, if it had been 
made without reservation and as a great act of recon- 
ciliation and justice by the British government. But 
the British government ignored the points of agreement 
in the report, the common bond of national sentiment 
that united all but the Ulster group, and Lloyd George 
put all the work of the convention on one side, as a 
failure from which there was nothing to be learned. He 
learned nothing, not even the unanimous conviction of 
the subcommittee on national defense that, after all 
that had happened, there could be no conscription in 
Ireland without the consent of an Irish Parliament. 
After the German offensive of 191 8 he announced that 
conscription would be extended to Ireland, and there 
was not a single party in that island, hardly an indi- 
vidual, who did not regard that statement as the final 
breaking of all pledges and as an outrageous insult 
to Irish pride. For as a people they would not allow 
their men to be taken without the consent of their own 
National Assembly, as though they were but slaves of 
the English who denied them the rights of common 
freedom. 

It is hard for the English people, even now, to under- 
stand that point of view. We keep on harping on the 
fact that Ireland "belongs" to England. We have in 
our bones the feeling that the Irish and the English 
are blood relations, united under the King, with the 
same interests, the same duties, the same loyalties. 
In the war, when the best of our manhood was being 
sent to the shambles, it seemed black treachery or cow- 
ardice that Irish youth should escape scot free while 
ours was fighting for "the liberty of the world." Even 
now, the majority of people in England hold that view, 

309 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

and it would, I think, be a right view, if Ireland had 
indeed been a partner with us in the same interests, the 
same duties, and the same loyalties. But that was not 
so. The Irish people believed that we had forfeited our 
right to loyalty by violating their interests, trampling 
on their loyalty, and absolving them from all duty by 
refusing their liberty. 

Again one must go back to the grim old past and to 
the intrigues, trickeries, stupidities, misunderstandings, 
and irreconcilable passions of present politics, to under- 
stand the fire of indignation which swept over Ireland 
at that threat of conscription. The Irish people rose 
as one man to resist it. At the Mansion House in 
Dublin representatives of the Nationalists, Labor 
party, Sinn Fein, and all-for-Ireland group met in 
conference, and on April 18, 1918, issued the following 
declaration: 

Taking our stand on Ireland's separate and distinct nation- 
hood, and affirming the principle of liberty that the governments of 
nations derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, 
we deny the right of the British government or any external authority 
to impose compulsory military service in Ireland against the clearly 
expressed will of the Irish people. The passing of the Conscription 
bill by the British House of Commons must be regarded as a decla- 
ration of war on the Irish nation. The alternative to accepting it 
as such is to surrender our liberties and to acknowledge ourselves 
slaves. It is in direct violation of the rights of small nationalities 
to self-determination, which even the Prime Minister of England 
— now preparing to employ naked militarism and force his Act 
upon Ireland — himself announced as an essential condition for 
peace at the Peace Congress. The attempt to enforce it is an un- 
warrantable aggression which we call upon all Irishmen to resist 
by the most effective means at their disposal. 

The Irish Catholic bishops also issued a declaration 
which contained the following words: 

In view especially of the historic relations between the two 
countries from the very beginning up to this moment, we consider 

310 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

that conscription is an oppressive and inhuman law which the Irish 
people have a right to resist by every means that are consonant with 
the law of God. 

The British government did not try to enforce con- 
scription in Ireland in face of this storm of popular 
indignation, but from that time forward they turned 
the screw of martial law with ever-increasing severity. 

In 191 8 there were over eleven hundred arrests, and 
several Irishmen had been bayoneted or shot for re- 
sisting arrest or trying to escape, while others had died 
in prison. Up to the end of that year only one police- 
man had been killed. British officers, and the Royal 
Irish Constabulary acting under their orders, were 
intolerant of Irish sentiment, customs, and free speech, 
behaving with oppressive attempts to break the spirit 
of the people, which had the effect of hardening that 
spirit into a cold hatred and contempt of English 
"tyranny." It was tyranny, as we must confess, done, 
not by the will of the English people, who were utterly 
ignorant of what was happening in Ireland, owing to the 
boycott of Irish news in a bought or partisan press, but 
by military and police officials with the narrow intelli- 
gence, the pride in a little brief authority, the exagger- 
ated sense of "discipline," and the spirit of "We'll 
teach 'em what's what!" which are characteristic 
qualities of many professional soldiers and of all police. 

Men were arrested and imprisoned for, "offenses" 
of the most trivial kind, or for mere political opinions. 
For being in possession of Sinn Fein literature, for read- 
ing, or listening to, political manifestoes they were sen- 
tenced to years of captivity. Boys and girls were 
imprisoned for "whistling derisively" at the police 
(just as French and Belgian boys and girls were impris- 
oned by the Germans for mocking at the "goose step"), 
or for singing old Irish songs, or speaking the Irish lan- 
guage. Small crowds of farmers, with their women folk, 

3" 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

in village market places, were broken up, and fairs, 
necessary for country life and trade, were forbidden. 
Not a day passed without some act of oppression or 
intolerance which excited the anger of Irish folk, who 
among all the people in the world are quickest to take 
offense and most remembering of insult and injustice. 

In December, 1918, there was a general election in 
Ireland which revealed the temper of the people. The 
Nationalists of the old Irish party were swept on one 
side, and only seven were returned. Sinn Fein captured 
seventy-three seats, and pledged themselves not to sit 
at Westminster, but to establish their own Parliament, 
called Dail Eirann, to set up their own courts of justice, 
to administer the republic they had proclaimed. This 
they proceeded to do with an efficiency, an organizing 
genius, and a respect for the rules of justice and equity 
which astonished all who had believed that the Irish 
people were incapable of ruling themselves. The best 
brains in Ireland, their most distinguished lawyers and 
magistrates, served in those courts, and settled innu- 
merable disputes in regard to land and property with 
advantage to the Irish people, according to all the 
evidence we have. But instead of turning a blind eye 
to a system of training in self-government which could 
have been adapted to a generous measure of Home 
Rule, still promised but still delayed, the British govern- 
ment increased their military forces in Ireland and made 
innumerable raids, house-to-house searches, and arrests, 
for the purpose of breaking up the courts, until most 
of the Republican leaders were in prison or in hiding. 

The Irish people had one great hope — illusory and 
vain. It was that in the Peace Conference, when many 
small nations were being given the right of "self-deter- 
mination," and when, out of the wreckage of old em- 
pires, new republics, like that of Jugo-Slavia and 
Czecho-Slovakia, were being created, the claims of 

312 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

Ireland would be given a hearing, and admitted by the 
great Powers, especially by the United States of America. 
Through the influence of Irish-Americans great pressure 
was brought to bear upon President Wilson, and Irish 
emissaries dogged the precincts of Versailles, with 
urgent pleas to obtain a hearing. It was of course im- 
possible for Great Britain to put the case of Ireland on 
to the conference table. It would have been a surrender 
of pride and a confession of impotence which her 
people would not tolerate for a second, even in imagina- 
tion. Only the simplicity of the Irish mind, simple 
even with all its shrewdness and its cunning, could have 
hoped for such a surrender — in the days of England's 
victory. It is foolish to ask something beyond the 
bounds of human nature as it is now constituted, and 
that was one thing. Lloyd George merely smiled at 
such audacity, or was impatient at the mention of it. 
President Wilson bluntly told his Irish-Americans that 
that question belonged to Great Britain's domestic 
politics, and could not be touched by other Powers. 

Yet the high-sounding phrases on the lips of our 
statesmen during the peace discussions were but a mock- 
ery so long as Ireland remained under martial law, 
and the more honest men at least who related their 
phrases to their deeds, and who were touched by the 
inspiration of victory which after long agony and a 
heritage of ruin promised the beginning of a new chap- 
ter in the history of the^world, would have put themselves 
right with their conscience by a magnanimous settlement 
in Ireland. There was no magnanimity. While there 
was talk of a more generous measure of Home Rule, and 
houses were being searched for arms in Catholic Ireland 
(but never one in Protestant Ireland), Sir Edward 
Carson went to Ireland and threatened to renew his 
rebellion if the government brought in a Home Rule 
bill of which he did not approve. He was not arrested 
21 313 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

for rebellious speech. On the contrary, Mr. Bonar Law 
and his friends found no harm in it, though in Catholic 
Ireland a man was sentenced to two years' imprisonment 
for singing an old rebel song. 

When at last the Irish people saw their hopes of the 
peace treaty dashed to the ground, when they found 
that they were still at the mercy of military and police 
governance (with all their best men in jail), something 
broke in them and the floodgates of passion were 
opened, and out of the bitterness of their hearts came the 
spirit of vengeance, and the will to kill. 

IX 

It was the beginning of a horrible guerrilla warfare, 
worse even than modern war between regular armies, 
because of its moral degradation, its secret acts, its 
individual cruelties, its action among women and 
children, its effect upon the psychology of the rival 
forces, its red Indian methods. The boys who enlisted 
in the "Irish Republican Army" wore no uniforms, 
were not distinguishable from the civilian population, 
and carried out their work of killing by craft and cun- 
ning rather than by open courage. Their first attacks 
were upon the Royal Irish Constabulary, whom they 
regarded as the agents of an alien tyranny, or as spies 
and informers. One by one, these men were killed like 
dogs, without a dog's chance of self-defense. The 
British government tried to stamp out this campaign 
of death by unlimited coercion. According to Erskine 
Childers, in his book, Military Rule in Ireland, there 
were, between January, 1919, and March, 1920, 22,279 
raids on houses, 2,332 political arrests, 151 deportations, 
429 proclamations suppressing meetings and newspapers. 

By the autumn of 1920 one hundred and six constables 
had been killed by Sinn Feiners, and in the summer of 

3H 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

that year, abandoning all policy of reconciliation, the 
British government passed an Act which took away all 
civil rights from the Irish people. Courts-martial were 
established, civil inquests were abandoned; any Irish 
man, woman, or child could be arrested on suspicion, 
and imprisoned without trial, for holding political 
opinions with which British officers did not agree, for 
belonging to societies which upheld the Irish claim to 
self-government, for any act or word or gesture, or the 
absence of any act or word, to the annoyance of any 
patrol of military or police, drunk or sober. That was 
not the legal wording of the Act, but those were the pow- 
ers it gave and the powers that were used. 

The policy of coercion was intrusted by the British 
government to the Chief Secretary, Sir Hamar Green- 
wood, a Canadian Jew, who in my judgment has done 
more to dishonor the British Empire than any living 
man. He owed his position to that group of interests 
led by Lord Beaverbrook (formerly Max Aitken of 
Canada) with the approval of Bonar Law and the 
sanction of Lloyd George, and he held it by a bluff, 
breezy, John Bull manner, which was the camouflage 
of craft, and by a courage and obstinacy in a dangerous 
policy which was the admiration of Tory minds with 
Prussian instincts, while he astonished and delighted 
them by his blank denials of undeniable evidence, his 
utter contempt for criticism and rebuke, his audacious 
handling of truth, his superb refusal to be intimidated 
by accusations of dishonor, lying, brutality, and con- 
nivance with crime. In Ireland, General Macready, 
old and artful in war and civil strife, was put in com- 
mand of military operations, and General Tudor, who 
has the soul of a Welsh chieftain in the eleventh century, 
was made responsible for the police, including a special 
body of volunteers, recruits from the unemployed soldiers 
of the Great War, at a high rate of pay, and known by 

3i5 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

their nickname of Black-and-Tans, which will live in 
history, with unenviable fame. 

The stage was set for the dirtiest kind of warfare 
which has ever happened in modern times. 

The Sinn Feiners adopted the ambush method as 
their main system of attack, their first purpose being 
the capture of arms and ammunition. It was an easy, 
though dangerous, game for them to come at night into 
a district away from their own homes, and to lie in wait 
for a military convoy or a lorry full of soldiers, from 
whom they were concealed behind hedges or walls. 
Irish chemists had concocted bombs for them which 
would blow a lorry to bits or make a mess of a party 
of soldiers. I am told they were "better" bombs than 
those used in the European war. Later, by attacks on 
Irish "barracks" — generally a small house or white- 
washed building, containing a few constables, whom 
they isolated first by felling trees across the roads of 
approach and cutting telephone wires — they obtained 
small stores of arms, and then as their strength increased 
and they were able to attack stronger garrisons, large 
stores of arms. 

Their "Intelligence" was highly efficient, as they had 
their recruits in every town and village of Ireland, in 
every post office, at every railway station, in banks and 
government buildings, even in Dublin Castle itself. 
By clever strategy and the ruthless use of firearms, 
they captured many mails and discovered the plans and 
activities of British officers, police constables, and 
private individuals. Any man of English, Scottish, or 
Irish race who conveyed information against members 
of the Irish Republican Army was marked down for 
execution as a spy, and with long patience and cunning 
they tracked him down until one day his body was 
riddled with bullets by a sudden attack in a lonely 
place, and left there with the words, "Spy, tried, con- 

316 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

victed and shot. I. R. A." as a warning to others of 
his kind. They shot some of their own women for 
"conversation" with the enemy, or cut off their hair 
in the market place, as I saw women treated in Belgium 
for the same offense with Germans. No enemy of 
theirs was safe, eating or drinking, praying or sleeping, 
indoors or out, with wife and children or with fellow 
worshipers in church. Into lonely farmhouses broke 
parties of masked men, to drag out some trembling 
fellow, in spite of the shrieks of his women folk, to shoot 
him in the back yard, or, if he struggled, in the presence 
of his wife and children. A British officer, retired after 
the European war, sat at table with his wife in a house 
near Dublin. As usual, his revolver lay ready at his 
elbow. It was the wife who noticed movements of men 
first. The husband had time to raise his hand and 
dodge as two men came in and fired. His hand received 
the bullet, and he shot his enemy through the stomach. 
The wife seized the other man by the throat and grabbed 
his revolver. He fled after a second of struggle, and 
the husband and wife escaped that night from Ireland, 
more lucky than others. More lucky, for instance, 
than the unfortunate officers who were billeted in 
Dublin and murdered in their bedrooms in the presence 
of their wives. ... If women were in the way, there 
was no mercy for them, at least in the case of an officer 
named Blake, who had been playing tennis with a 
friend until dark, and then joined two ladies in a motor 
car. After a short drive, he got down to open a park 
gate, and as he did so a party of men leaped out and 
shot him. One of the ladies (who was expecting a 
child) flung herself between the assassins and the 
second officer, and shared his fate, which was death. 
The other lady was allowed to escape. Such incidents 
were not rare. 

Inspired by a cold hatred of any man in British 

317 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

uniform, embittered by prison treatment, which is 
never a reconciling remedy, and inflamed by the rough 
handling of soldiers or jailers, by the terror inflicted on 
mothers and sisters in midnight searches, when often they 
had to submit to the brutal insults of drunken men, 
and above all by a fanatical belief in the justice of 
their cause, young Irishmen in all parts of the country 
engaged in this red Indian warfare, and had no kind of 
human pity, no softening touch of conscience, when it 
came to the killing of a "spy," the ambush of troops, or 
the execution of men whom they called murderers 
because in courts-martial they had condemned Irish 
rebels to death. 

These Irish boys received their orders from head- 
quarters, and obeyed them with the knowledge that if 
they disobeyed they would be condemned as cowards 
and traitors. By all laws of human nature there must 
have been boys among them who had no spirit for the 
fight, who hated the thought of killing or being killed — 
gentle lads, taught to love Christ and the peace of 
Christ — and I am told that some of them wept and 
agonized when the secret orders came. But for the most 
part, as I am told also by their friends, they were eager 
to go into "action," impatient to get the order for an 
ambush, grim, resolute, and cunning in this way of 
attack, and heroic in their offer of death for Ireland's 
sake, as they believed, if they were shot in action or 
hanged in jail. 

These boys were incited, inspired, and comforted 
by many of their women and many of their priests, 
who regarded them as soldiers in a war of liberation, 
justified in the sight of God and by the code of human 
honor. To the reproach that they were not in uniform, 
they talked about the Boers. To the accusation of 
murder, they asked what England did to German spies. 
To a death sentence for carrying firearms or being 

3i8 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

caught in an ambush, they rebuked their judges — Brit- 
ish officers of courts-martial — for killing their prison- 
ers. And theoretically there was logic in those answers, 
as British officers I know admit. But the logic of this 
kind of war is devil's logic. Not even for liberty's sake 
is the killing of men in cold blood or before their women 
folk justified. Not even savage warfare could be more 
cruel than some of the acts committed by the I. R. A., 
like the assassination of officers on leave in Dublin. 

The spirit of it belongs to the Paleolithic Age, and 
is not to be reconciled with the Christian faith by any 
casuistry, though Catholic priests gave it their blessing 
and inspired its action by their own ardor. Now and 
again some of their bishops protested against the horror 
of this way of war and denounced it in solemn words. 

In his Advent pastoral, Cardinal Logue wrote the 
following words referring to the murder of fifteen officers 
in Dublin: 

The tragedies of last Sunday have oppressed me with a deep 
sense of sadness and a feeling akin to despair. I have never hesitated 
to condemn, in the strongest terms at my command, such deeds of 
blood, from whatever source they may have sprung. I believe 
that every man and woman in Ireland who retains a spark of Chris- 
tian feeling, or even the instincts of humanity, deplores, detests, 
and condemns the cold-blooded murders of Sunday morning. No 
object could excuse them; no motive could justify them; no heart, 
unless hardened and steeled against pity, could tolerate their cruelty. 
Patriotism is a noble virtue when it pursues its object by means 
that are sincere, honorable, just, and in strict accordance with 
God's law; otherwise it degenerates into a blind, brutal, reckless 
passion, inspired not by love of country, but by Satan, ''who was a 
murderer from the beginning." The perpetrators of such crimes 
are not real patriots, but the enemies of their country, robbing her 
of just sympathy and raising obstacles to her progress and im- 
pressing a deep stain on her fair fame. 

The cardinal also condemned in the same pastoral 
the general, indiscriminate massacre of innocent and 

319 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

inoffensive victims which was perpetrated by the forces 
of the Crown in Croke Park on Sunday evening — 
when Black-and-Tans fired into a football crowd, causing 
fifty casualties, as a retaliation for the morning crimes. 
A week later fifteen of the auxiliary cadets were am- 
bushed in County Cork and the wounded were killed 
to a man, in revenge for their action at Croke Park. 
In revenge again for that the police burned down a large 
sector of the most prosperous quarter of Cork. 

On December 12, 1920, Doctor Cohalan, the Catholic 
Bishop of Cork, issued a proclamation in reference to 
ambushes, kidnapping, and murder. He said that 
besides the guilt involved in these acts by reason of 
their opposition to the law of God, anyone who should 
within the diocese of Cork organize or take part in an 
ambush, or in kidnapping, or otherwise should be 
guilty of murder or attempt at murder, should incur, 
by the very act, the censure of excommunication. 

In the course of his sermon at the cathedral, Bishop 
Cohalan said it was a safe exploit to murder a police- 
man from behind a screen, and until reprisals began 
there was no danger to the general community, but, even 
leaving aside the moral aspect of the question for the 
moment, what has the country gained politically by 
the murder of policemen? Some Republicans spoke 
of such and such districts of the country being delivered 
from British sway when policemen were murdered and 
barracks burned. It was a narrow view, and who 
would now mention any district that had been delivered 
from British rule by the murder of the old Royal Irish 
Constabulary men and the burning of barracks? No, 
the killing of the Royal Irish Constabulary men was 
murder, and the burning of barracks was simply the de- 
struction of Irish property. 

The bishop continued that reprisals began with the 
murder of the late Lord Mayor MacCurtain, and now 

320 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

it was like a devil's competition between some members 
of the Republicans and agents of the Crown, in feats of 
murder and arson. Recently ambushes had taken 
place with serious loss of life, and he would say this 
about ambushes (leaving out of the question for the 
moment their moral aspect) — the ambushers come to 
a place from no one knows where, and when their work 
is done they depart to no one knows what destination. 
There is not much risk to the ambushers personally, 
but by this time boys or men taking part in ambushes 
must know that by their criminal acts they are expos- 
ing perhaps a whole countryside, perhaps a town or 
city, to the danger of terrible reprisals; that when they 
depart and disperse in safety they are leaving the lives 
and property of a number of innocent people unprotected 
and undefended, to the fury of reprisals at the hands of 
servants of the government. Then, over and above 
all, there was the moral aspect of these ambushes. Let 
there be no doubt about it — there was no doubt about 
it — that these ambushers were murderers, and every 
life taken in an ambush was a murder. Notwithstanding 
repeated condemnations of murder, and repeated warn- 
ing, terrible murders had been committed these past 
few weeks. As a result of the ambush the previous 
night at Dillon's Cross, the city had suffered, the bishop 
thought, as much damage at the hands of the servants 
of the government as Dublin had suffered during the 
rebellion of 1916. It was all very well to talk of the 
city of Cork being under the care and solicitude of the 
Republican Army. The city was nearly a ruin, and the 
ruin had followed on the murderous ambush at Dillon's 
Cross. If any section or member of the volunteer 
organization refused to hear the Church's teaching 
about murder, there was no remedy but the extreme 
remedy of excommunication from the Church, and 
the bishop said he would certainly issue a decree ex- 

321 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

communicating anyone who, after that notice, should 
take part in an ambush or in kidnapping, or otherwise 
should be guilty of murder or attempted murder, or 
arson. 

The bishop concluded by asking the congregation to 
pray that God in His mercy would vouchsafe an honor- 
able peace which would of itself be an effective means 
of putting an end to crime and re-establishing order. 

Those pastoral denunciations fell on deaf ears, not 
without consequences which the Catholic Church in 
Ireland will rue for many a long day, as for the first 
time in history Irishmen in great numbers broke free 
from the authority of their ecclesiastical leaders, and 
denied their right to interfere in this political and 
national struggle by any religious call to obedience and 
discipline. 

X 

That is one side of the picture. Sinn Fein murders, 
ambushes, and raids, the blowing up of trains, the 
burning down of old mansions, the terrorism of armed 
and secret bands undistinguished by any sign or badge 
among ordinary civilians, unless they were caught 
red-handed. 

There is another side, and in all honesty we must 
bring it to the light of truth. The forces of "law and 
order" in Ireland, above all that force known as the 
Black-and-Tans (because of black belts on khaki tunics), 
under General Tudor, committed acts exactly like those 
of the Sinn Fein "gunmen," not more justified. A 
famous case which could not be hushed up was the 
murder of Mr. McCurtain, Lord Mayor of Cork, by 
masked men who killed him at dead of night before his 
wife's eyes. In spite of all government denials there is 
little doubt in the public mind, both in Ireland and in 
England, that the Lord Mayor was the victim of a police 

322 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

reprisal. That was only one of many less-known cases. 
This guerrilla warfare became a vendetta like that of 
Sicilian bandits. The Sinn Feiners killed a British 
soldier or policeman. To revenge his death, British 
troops or police — mostly General Tudor's "lions" — 
killed the first Sinn Feiners they could lay hands on. 
A British patrol was ambushed near a village. Shortly 
afterward troops would appear in lorries shooting up 
the street, spraying bullets from machine guns, and 
at their leisure burning a few houses, the local stores, 
or the creamery. Men would be dragged out of their 
beds and shot, young boys would be battered in their 
back yards, and women frightened out of their wits 
by midnight raids. 

Then the next chapter would begin. Those troops 
would be marked down, their officers identified by private 
letters captured in the mails, and there would be fresh 
ambushes, fresh murders, leading to more reprisals, 
more raids, more burnings, and the "accidental" shoot- 
ing of women standing at their shop doors, children 
playing in the village street, old men working in their 
fields, young men who ran away when called to halt, 
knowing that if they halted they would, as likely as not, 
be shot or bayoneted or clubbed — innocent or guilty. 

I can understand the psychology of our men, as I 
imagine (perhaps quite falsely) that I understand the 
psychology of the Sinn Feiners, though I loathe their 
way of war. It is indeed easy to understand the men- 
tality of a body of young British soldiers or "Black-and- 
Tans," sent to a district in Ireland. In the beginning 
they thought it was going to be "a soft job." They 
had visions of a brush or two with Irish rebels who 
would then be good boys and see the folly of their game, 
up against tanks, machine guns, and well-trained troops 
who had been through the Great War. There would be 
flirtations with pretty Irish lasses, plenty of milk in the 

323 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

farmhouses, a gay time in Dublin or Cork, and friendly 
greetings on the "long, long way to Tipperary." . . . 

What was the reality? They found themselves in 
a hostile population in which there were enemies who 
might kill them if they walked alone, by a shot in the 
back at the next turn of the road, between the village 
stores and the post office, at the corner of a country 
lane, at any time of the day or night. Whichever way 
they looked, they saw hostile eyes staring at them, 
eyes with hatred in them, eyes which had a menace of 
death. If they spoke to a pretty girl she did not smile, 
like the girls in France, but became pale with fear or 
red with anger. There was a sense of menace always 
about them. Out of a crowd in a market place there 
might come a group of men to shoot them down like 
dogs when they were buying picture postcards. Pres- 
ently they were not allowed to go about, except in 
military formation or in armored cars and lorries. 
They were cooped up in barracks where they could 
drink as much as they liked. There was nothing to 
do except drink and play cards, until night came and 
they were ordered to form search parties. They were 
taught their duty. General Tudor gave lectures to 
his officers about the short way with rebels. The 
officers passed the word on to the men. There was no 
sentiment about it. No gentle chivalry! . . . 

Passion took hold of them at times. A favorite 
comrade had been shot in a lonely place. They had been 
sniped as they passed down a village street. A mess 
of flesh and blood was all that was left of some pals in a 
lorry proceeding up a country road near a lonely farm- 
house or wayside inn or little Irish town. Where was 
the enemy? Nowhere — and everywhere. How could 
one distinguish between innocent and guilty? They 
were all guilty — "Sinn Fein up to the neck," as the 
British soldier said. "Give them a taste of their own 

3H 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

poison!" ... So reprisals happened. They were as 
logical as hell — but not a credit to the fame of England, 
or Scotland, not in our old code of honor, not good for 
publication. 

The only place in which they were not reported for 
publication was in the newspaper press of Great Britain. 
Mr. Lloyd George's newspaper friends did not like to 
hurt his feelings. Other papers did not like to hurt 
the feelings of readers more interested in our nobility 
of ideals or our divorce-court cases. Questions were 
asked in the House, and Sir Hamar Greenwood showed 
his quality in answering them. He first denied all 
accusations blankly and firmly. Reprisals? Certainly 
not! Never! No such thing! Sinn Fein propaganda! 
General Tudor's young gentlemen were noble fellows — 
heroes of the Great War. He could find no evidence 
at all — after careful inquiry — for any alleged acts of 
violence. 

In every country in the world Sinn Fein was report- 
ing tragic episodes, shocking misdeeds, by men wearing 
British uniforms, arousing the suspicion or horror of 
our friends, the hatred of our enemies. But in England 
for a long time we heard nothing but Sinn Fein atroci- 
ties, in full detail. The English people were unable to 
obtain evidence of things done to their dishonor, and 
it is to their credit that without such evidence they were 
slow to believe that British Ministers or British officers 
would connive at a policy of terrorism which violated all 
our best traditions. Presently ugly facts did begin 
to thrust through the screen of silence. The represent- 
atives of some newspapers like the Times, the Daily 
News, and the Manchester Guardian were allowed by 
their editors to tell the things they had seen and the 
evidence they had gained. Mr. Hugh Martin, of the 
Daily News, was especially courageous in unmasking 
the truth, and his reports of the burning and sacking of 

325 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Irish villages, the flogging and battering of Irish boys, 
the shooting of civilians in cold blood by bodies of 
Black-and-Tans, and the terrorization of Irish women in 
midnight raids by drunken or brutalized military police, 
could not be denied, excepting by Sir Hamar Greenwood. 

One of the most notorious cases, not more terrible 
than many others, but less easy to conceal because a 
resident magistrate risked his life by giving evidence, 
was the murder of Canon Magner and Timothy Crowley. 
The facts, as officially admitted, were that at I P.M. 
on December 17, 1920, about thirty auxiliary police 
left Dunmanway, in two motor lorries, with a cadet 
named Hart in charge, to go to Cork to attend the 
funeral of one of their force who was recently shot dead 
at Cork. About a mile on the road they met Canon 
Magner, the seventy-three-year-old parish priest of 
Dunmanway, and Timothy Crowley, aged twenty-four, 
a farmer's son. The cadet in charge stopped the lor- 
ries, walked up to Timothy Crowley, asked him for a 
permit, and then shot him dead with his revolver. 
He then turned to the priest and, according to the evi- 
dence of one of the police, "started talking to him." 
Two other cadets went toward him, but he turned round, 
waving his revolver. While they were returning, 
Cadet Hart seized the hat from the priest's head and 
threw it on the ground and made him kneel down. He 
fired and wounded him, and then fired again, killing 
him. He went through the priest's pockets. Mr. 
Brady, the resident magistrate, who was a witness of 
the murder, was also threatened with death, but took 
cover and escaped. It was evident that Cadet Hart 
had been drinking heavily. He was arrested, and 
certified as "insane" by his superior officers. 

In the House of Commons, on March 3, 1921, Com- 
mander Kenworthy asked Sir Hamar Greenwood whether 
he was aware that Mr. Brady, resident magistrate, 

326 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

present at the murder of Crowley and Canon Magner, 
stated that the other cadets in the lorry made no attempt 
to interfere, that Mr. Brady's house was subsequently 
raided; whether Mr. Brady was called as a witness at 
the special investigation; whether these other cadets 
were punished in any way, and whether any of them are 
now employed in Ireland. 

Sir Hamar Greenwood answered: 

A written statement by Mr. Brady, setting out the 
full circumstances of the murder, was fully considered 
in the course of the official investigation into the con- 
duct of the cadets who were witnesses of the occurrence. 
As a result of this investigation it was decided that 
these cadets were in no way responsible for the crime 
and that no action was called for in their case. 

On March 19th, three months after the murder, 
Ministers were asked whether Mr. Brady's house had 
been raided by the auxiliaries, whether they had threat- 
ened him, and whether he had left the country on the 
advice of the right honorable gentleman's responsible 
officers. 

Replying for Sir Hamar Greenwood, Mr. Henry 
could not deny this statement, but professed ignorance 
of the whereabouts of Mr. Brady, who had obtained 
leave of absence and was "broken down in nerves." 

It was in September, 1920, that the burning and loot- 
ing of Balbriggan drew national attention to a policy 
of reprisals that had already been in force and could no 
longer be denied by the British government. Lord 
Grey, Lord Robert Cecil, Mr. Asquith, and Mr. Hender- 
son called for an inquiry, and that was replied to 
flippantly by Mr. Lloyd George, who seemed to find 
singular amusement in the destruction of Irish cream- 
eries. Mr. Winston Churchill defended the conduct of 
the military and police in Ireland, and said that if the 
armed forces of the Crown were punished for their 

327 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

conduct they would revolt. General Macready had 
already admitted that it was "a delicate and difficult 
matter" to punish men who, under his authority, did 
acts of indiscipline in the way of reprisals. Later, at 
Carnarvon, the Prime Minister of England admitted 
and defended reprisals in a speech of memorable bru- 
tality. 

The Irish Catholic bishops issued a manifesto denounc- 
ing the reign of terror caused by reprisals as solemnly 
as they denounced the Sinn Fein warfare. 

We know that latterly, at least, all pretense of strict discipline 
has been thrown to the winds and that those who profess to be the 
guardians of law and order have become the most ardent votaries 
of lawlessness and disorder; that they are running wild through the 
country, making night hideous by raids; that reckless and indis-' 
criminate shootings in crowded places have made many innocent 
victims; that towns are sacked as in the rude warfare of earlier ages; 
that those who run through fear are shot at sight. . . . For all 
this not the men, but their masters, are chiefly to blame. It is not 
a question of hasty reprisals, which, however unjustifiable, might 
be attributed to extreme provocation, nor of quick retaliation on 
evildoers, nor of lynch law for miscreants — much less of self-defense 
of any kind whatsoever. It is an indiscriminate vengeance delib- 
erately wreaked on a whole countryside, without any proof of its 
complicity in crime, by those who ostensibly are employed by the 
British government to protect the lives and property of the people 
and restore order in Ireland. 

While this was happening, the Home Rule Act was 
annulled and a new and utterly inadequate measure 
was passed through Parliament, disregarding the advice, 
warning, and pleading of English Liberals and Irish 
Moderates. It divided Ireland into two nations, one 
with a population of three and a quarter millions, the 
other of one and a quarter, and there could not be a 
single legislature unless the majority agreed to give 
half the representation to the minority. That alone 
secured its condemnation by every Irishman in the 

328 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

South and West; neither Protestant Ulster nor Cath- 
olic Ireland believed in it as a promise of peace. 



XI 

All through the year of 1920 and half the year of 1921 
the reign of terror continued in Ireland, with increasing 
ruthlessness on both sides, and with a complete aban- 
donment of statesmanship by the British government in 
favor of what was called by the Lord Chancellor of 
England, in sinister words, "The Reconquest of Ire- 
land"! Yet it was denied that we were at war with 
the Irish people, until June, 1921, when the word "war" 
was used by Ministers in the House of Commons, not 
carelessly, I think, but as a preparation of the public 
mind for an intensive military campaign in Catholic 
Ireland after the inauguration of the Ulster Parliament. 
Because we were not officially at war with the Irish peo- 
ple, it was permissible to shoot or hang our captives as 
rebels and murderers, and not as prisoners of war. 

On November 1, 1920, a youth named Kevin Barry, 
captured in action, was hanged in Dublin. He met his 
death with a cheerful and heroic courage, while outside 
the prison vast crowds of Irish people wept and prayed 
for him. 

On February 1, 1921, Cornelius Murphy was shot 
at Cork for being in possession of a revolver and ammu- 
nition. On February 26th five Irish lads were shot at 
Cork for "levying war." On February 28th another 
man was shot for "being improperly in possession 
of a revolver and ammunition." On March 14th six 
men were hanged in batches at Dublin — two on a charge 
of murder, and four on a charge of "high treason and 
levying war." Ten others followed to their death by 
shooting or hanging in Dublin and Cork "for being 
improperly in possession of arms and ammunition," 
22 3 2 9 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

a charge which would condemn the entire youth of 
Ireland to death, in Ulster (where no arrest was 
ever made on such a charge) as well as in the Catholic 
provinces. 

There was no cessation of hostilities or of reprisals 
as the day came nearer when the Home Rule Act of 1920 
was to be put into operation. It was known in advance 
that no single Sinn Fein member would attend the 
Southern Parliament, but the British were determined 
to set up the Ulster Parliament as a preliminary to "re- 
conquest" in the other parts. 

On June 1st, only a few weeks before that new era in 
Irish history, Sir Hamar Greenwood made a speech on 
reprisals in Ireland, in which he made the following 
statement: 

I have said at this bar time and again, in reference to reprisals, 
that no one tried more strenuously than I have to put them down, 
and I think I have succeeded in doing so. 

Those words of his will become a mockery in history, 
for during his administration, which began on April 3, 
1920, the "unofficial" and "official" reprisals increased 
at a monstrous rate. Whereas in April there were 
eleven buildings in Ireland wholly or partially destroyed, 
in May there were thirty-eight, in June twenty-four, 
in July two hundred and forty-four, in August two 
hundred and two, and in the first five months of 1921 
over one thousand. 

Sir Hamar Greenwood also said that in the non- 
martial law area, which comprises the great part of 
Ireland, there never have been official reprisals. 

"Reprisals are rare. Unofficial reprisals are now 
rare indeed, so rare that we may say they never occur 
in Ireland." That statement, soothing to our British 
conscience, was immediately challenged by the Irish 
people, who issued the following rejoinder: 

33o 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 



Unofficial Reprisals in the Non-martial Law Area 

The havoc in Headford, Co. Galway, on January 18th, 1920, and 
subsequent days when 19 residences, farmhouses and shops were 
destroyed, was only one of many "unofficial" reprisals in that 
month. The wrecking of Donegal town in which 100 shops and 
residences were destroyed or damaged occurred in February. The 
town of Clifden, Connemara, was sacked on March 16th. Sixteen 
buildings were wholly or partially destroyed in the town of West- 
port, Co. Mayo, on March 26th. During the month of April many 
residences, shops and other premises were destroyed in fifteen towns 
not in the Martial Law area. And in one week ending May 21st, 
ten farmhouses, seven private residences, four shops, two hotels, 
a granary and a mill were destroyed in the Non-martial Law counties 
of Galway, Mayo and Offaly (King's Co.). 

Unofficial Reprisals in the Martial Law Area 

So much for some of the "Unofficial" reprisals, "so rare that we 
may say that they never occur." There are others. In the eight 
counties under Martial Law the number of buildings and property 
of all kinds destroyed "unofficially" by British forces was more 
than twice the number of the buildings and property officially de- 
stroyed. The following is a comparison covering the period January 
1st, 1921, to May 28th, 1921, between the premises and property 
destroyed or damaged by order of the British Military Governors in 
the Martial Law area and those destroyed or damaged by roving 
bands of Constables and Troops. The phrase "Premises and 
Property" covers crops, furniture and personal effects, as well as 
shops, farmhouses, residences, public halls, factories and works: 



Year 1921 


Premises and property 

destroyed or damaged 

under official order 


Premises and property 

destroyed or damaged 

unofficially 


January 


22 
7 

9 
36 

88 


52 
76 
19 

35 
172 


February 


March 


April 


May (ist-28th) 




162 


354 



The wholesale destruction of the 
combatant Irish men and women, 

33i 



houses of non- 
" officially" and 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

"unofficially" — and I can see no distinction in the evil 
of either method of collective punishment — failed to 
terrorize them into a surrender of their claim to self- 
government, though their daily life was haunted by 
fear and their nights were terror-stricken. Sir Hamar 
Greenwood, faced with his failure, sought refuge in 
the pretense that the destruction of property was not 
considerable. In the words of an Irish leader, "over 
three thousand ruined buildings in Ireland gave him 
the lie." 

XII 

I have set down what I believe to be the true facts 
about Ireland, impartially, without special pleading for 
one side or the other. For that is how history will be 
written and we shall not be able to dodge its verdict. 
To my mind now looking at the whole tragedy as it is 
close to us, I think the verdict will be against England, 
or at least against British statesmen who betrayed the 
honor and good name of England, and the ideals for 
which so many of our men died in the European war. 
By their lack of generosity in early days when it would 
have been so easy to be generous, and so fruitful of 
friendship, by their utter disregard of the Irish temper- 
ament and traditions, by their malign favoritism toward 
the truculance of Ulster — the first to take up arms and 
proclaim rebellion — by their political intrigues and 
breaking of pledges, by their adoption of Prussian 
methods after a war for liberty, by their abandonment 
of government in Ireland to military and police officials 
with narrow brains and soulless instincts, by conniving 
at the indiscipline and private vengeance of armed police, 
among whom were men of evil character tempted by 
opportunity, and provoked into passion, by ridiculing 
all efforts at peace and reconciliation by thousands of 
liberal minds in England, and falling back upon old 

33* 



THE^ TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

traditions of tyranny and coercion, by hiding the happen- 
ings in Ireland from public knowledge in England, and 
by proceeding stubbornly upon a line of policy which 
was bound to fail according to all historical experience, 
and was essentially evil in its principles, they raised up 
enemies against us in all parts of the world, and so 
blackened our reputation that it will need the saving 
grace of time to wash it clean again in years of nobler 
leadership. 

Yet, having written these words, which are not 
pleasant to write, it is impossible to acquit the Irish 
people of evil acts and obstinate stupidities which 
would make one despair of them if they were not re- 
deemed by fine qualities of spirit and character. That 
guerrilla warfare of theirs was a dirty business, not 
justified by any claim to liberty. It was a hark back to 
the cave men, not a lead forward to a new era of civili- 
zation and human progress. There are limits even to 
the claims of liberty, for otherwise all governments 
would go down in a welter of bloody anarchy, because a 
majority or minority accused them of "tyranny." The 
Irish people had a right to demand self-government 
within the Empire, by all methods consistent with a 
decent code of honor. Personally I cannot think that 
the Easter rebellion belonged to that code. Because, 
whatever the measure of our misdeeds in the past and 
our tactlessness or stupidity in the beginning of the war, 
Ireland was not suffering under any grinding tyranny 
which justified such action. Her people were prosper- 
ous. They were free in all but separate government. 
At that time they were not arrested or imprisoned or 
coerced for political reasons. They had freedom in 
their faith. The English people had not been hostile 
to them. There were ties of friendship and of love 
between many English and many Irish. Their writers, 
players, painters, had been accepted with enthusiastic 

333 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

homage in England. Their claim for Home Rule was 
supported by all liberal Englishmen. In spite of all 
that happened afterward, their cold-blooded killing of 
policemen and soldiers went outside the bounds of 
legitimate warfare, even if we grant their right to resist 
coercive measures by force of arms. 

Their way of argument, as well as their way of warfare, 
was cunningly unfair. They adopted, to the world, 
the pose of an innocent people suffering Christian mar- 
tyrdom under a bloody and ruthless terror, not acknowl- 
edging that at least in bloodshed they took the lead, 
and that men who are attacked have the right to retali- 
ate according to all human law. They seemed to 
believe, at least for propaganda purposes, that British 
troops should allow themselves to be ambushed with 
impunity, that officers or men should allow themselves 
to be murdered in the presence of their wives, without 
a gesture of self-defense, that very grim and terrible 
deeds might be done in the name of Irish liberty, and 
become ennobled. In the name of Russian liberty the 
Bolsheviki massacred the Tsar and his daughters with 
dreadful cruelty, killed thousands of political prisoners, 
committed acts of great atrocity which are not made 
white as snow because there was tyranny under Tsardom 
or cruelty under counter-revolutionary generals of the 
old regime. 

Nor did Sinn Fein reveal any knowledge of English 
psychology, by imagining that our people would be 
frightened or fought into surrender. Every ambush 
they made on British troops was a setback in their 
claim to self-government, for it choked sympathy and 
hardened hearts. Every "gunman" they sent to 
England to burn signal boxes or shipyards was an enemy 
of people striving for peace with Ireland. The English 
people were shamed and sickened and startled, not by 
the ambushes of the I. R. A., but by the policy of 

334 



THE TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

reprisals. Their desire for a peaceful settlement was 
due not to fear, but to that generosity of soul which the 
Irish denied. When Terence MacSwiney, Lord Mayor 
of Cork, died in Brixton prison by hunger striking, 
there were sarcastic comments, it is true, in the House 
of Commons, but in the streets of London, when his 
body passed with a guard of honor in Sinn Fein uniform, 
the people doffed their hats and were pitiful. And in 
June of 1921, before the King's visit to Belfast, when 
the Irish ambushes were in full swing and English 
soldiers were being killed, there were Sinn Fein proces- 
sions in London, with the Irish carrying the Republican 
flags, playing their pipes, singing old rebel songs, and 
shouting, "Up, Sinn Fein ! " The London crowds watched 
them without hostility, without a scuffle, even with 
smiling sympathy, for there is something in us which 
might seem like weakness but for our record in the 
Great War, and it is not weakness, but a generous 
spirit toward liberty and those who struggle for it, 
even though our own government is for a while opposed 
to it in spirit and in act. I doubt whether any other 
people in the world would have been so magnanimous, 
so "sporting." I doubt whether the Irish themselves 
will learn a lesson from it, for in spite of many beautiful 
qualities of Irish character, they are, as a Celtic people, 
unforgiving, ungenerous to those they call their enemy, 
likely to receive a gift as an insult, to answer fair play 
by ill will, and good humor with ill temper, nourishing 
grievances for their own sake. 

So it was, to cite a trivial instance, when I went to 
the United States. I was scrupulously fair to the 
Irish, and though I denounced the acts of Sinn Fein, 
as I have denounced them here, I also denounced the 
acts of "reprisals" in stronger terms still. I gave the 
facts of Irish history as I have given them here, fairly, 
without bias, except, perhaps, leaning a little to the 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Irish side — because I am English — with strict regard 
to historical truth, as far as I know it. But the Irish- 
Americans shouted me down in New York, Chicago, 
and other cities, and they shouted louder when I spoke 
fair things about the Irish than when I admitted the 
injustice of England in the past. They did not want 
fair play. They wanted passionate unreason, excuse 
for violence, more food for hatred; and it seemed to me 
that their love of Ireland was less than their hatred of 
England. 

All that is in the bad old past. As I write there is 
new hope for Ireland, as for England and the world. 

On the eve of the King's visit to Belfast to open the 
Ulster Parliament on June 22d there had been Cabinet 
dissensions which still belong to secret political history. 
Unionists and Coalition Liberals were violently divided 
as to the future policy in Ireland, some demanding a 
new offer of conciliation, some urging a stronger measure 
of military coercion in the South and West. The Prime 
Minister was, it seems, for coercion, and that night in 
the House of Lords, Lord Birkenhead, who, at the 
Cabinet, was for conciliation, made a truculent speech 
which seemed to close all doors of hope. In reply to 
some Irish Unionist peers who pressed for the enlarge- 
ment of the financial powers given to the two Parlia- 
ments of Ireland under the new Act, he said that such 
expedients were useless, that there was war in Ireland, 
and that the Irish must be crushed by the dispatch of 
large bodies of fresh troops. 

At the same time the Sinn Fein leaders intercepted a 
letter dated June 16th, from Sir Henry Wilson, chief 
of the Imperial General Staff, to Sir James Craig, Premier 
of the Northern Parliament, regretting that he could not 
attend the opening of that Parliament, as he was engaged 
in dispatching large reinforcements to Ireland for the 
purpose of finally crushing the Sinn Fein rebellion. 

336 



THE '/TRUTH ABOUT IRELAND 

In such black thunderclouds of political strife the 
King and Queen set out for Belfast, risking their lives 
gladly for the sake of peace in Ireland, though their 
Ministers were afraid to risk their jobs. Belfast gave 
them a great welcome, and the heart of Ireland itself 
was touched by this courageous act and by the King's 
speech, in which he declared his love for the Irish people 
and prayed that they might work together in the cause 
of peace. The text for his speech was "Let us forget 
and forgive." 

The effect of this call from the King was instanta- 
neous throughout the world, and in every country there 
was an appeal for a new policy of conciliation, and a 
stern criticism of the contrast between the King's 
magnanimity and the harshness of that speech by the 
Lord Chancellor, "the keeper of his conscience." 

On that night, June 22d, De Valera, "President of 
the Irish Republic," was arrested in a house at Black- 
rock, Dublin, but released next day, when his identity 
was discovered; and on June 26th a letter was dispatched 
to him by the Prime Minister of England: 

June 24th, 1921. 
Sir: 

The British Government are deeply anxious that so far as they 
can assure it, the King's appeal for reconciliation in Ireland shall 
not have been made in vain. Rather than allow yet another oppor- 
tunity of settlement in Ireland to be cast aside, they feel it incum- 
bent upon them to make a final appeal in the spirit of the King's 
words for a conference between themselves and the representatives 
of Southern and Northern Ireland. 

I write, therefore, to convey the following invitation to you as 
the chosen leader of the great majority in Southern Ireland, and to 
Sir James Craig, the Premier of Northern Ireland. 

(1) That you should attend a conference here in London, in 
company with Sir James Craig, to explore to the utmost the pos- 
sibility of a settlement. 

(2) That you should bring with you for the purpose any col- 
leagues whom you may select. The Government will of course 

337 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

give a safe conduct to all who may be chosen to participate in the 
conference. 

We make this invitation with a fervent desire to end the ruin- 
ous conflict which has for centuries divided Ireland and embittered 
the relations of the peoples of these two islands, who ought to live 
in neighbourly harmony with each other, and whose co-operation 
would mean so much not only to the Empire but to humanity. 

We wish that no endeavour should be lacking on our part to 
realize the King's prayer, and we ask you to meet us, as we will 
meet you, in the spirit of conciliation for which His Majesty appealed. 
I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) D. Lloyd George. 

This invitation to a conference was accepted by Sir 
James Craig, to whom it was sent in the same terms, and 
De Valera replied guardedly that, while earnestly de- 
siring to help in bringing about a lasting peace between 
the people of these two islands, he saw no means by 
which it could be reached if the Prime Minister denied 
Ireland's essential unity and set aside the principle of 
national self-determination. Before replying more fully 
he desired to consult with representatives of the "political 
minority" in Ireland. 

Those consultations with the Irish Unionists followed 
by conferences with the British government are now 
taking place, and it is the prayer of the English and 
Irish peoples that out of the darkness of long and tragic 
strife there may come the light of a lasting peace between 
two peoples whose union in liberty and in affection will 
be a promise of hope for the youth that is coming to 
make the new world. 

The tragedy of Ireland through a thousand years of 
history may be replaced by the happiness of her future, 
free among the federation of British peoples, and in the 
society of all the nations. 



IX 

THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 



IN the beginning of 1921 I had an opportunity of 
studying at first hand, and with extraordinary opportu- 
nities of knowledge, one of the most important questions 
of the world, upon which the future of civilization, and 
especially of our European life, largely depends. It was 
the question of what the United States of America 
would do under the new leadership which had come to 
her with President Harding, and what part her people 
would play in international policy. That question is 
not yet answered in full, because the future holds its 
own secrets, but as far as we know it the reply is 
hopeful. 

For whether we like it or not — and there are some who 
don't — America has largely in her hands the great deci- 
sion as to whether white civilization, as we know it, 
and as most of us like it, will progress in an orderly way 
to a higher plane of development in peaceful industry, 
with a little more comfort for plain folk, with a good 
margin for the little things of art and beauty which 
make up the joy of life, greater security against the 
menace of war, and a relief from the deadening weight 
of armaments, or whether it will fall, as some European 
nations have already fallen, into decay and disease, 
poverty-stricken, underfed, staggering and fainting 
through a jungle darkness. 

If America withdrew into herself, holding herself aloof 

339 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

from the world problems, demanding full payment of 
her loans, refusing extension of credit, and hardening 
into antagonism against the Allies in the war, it would 
be impossible, I am sure, to heal the wounds of Europe. 
We cannot do without American grains, fats, raw mate- 
rial, and manufactured goods. Who thinks so is a fool, 
without any knowledge of world conditions. More than 
that, Europe needs the moral support and judgment and 
friendliness of the United States. The League of Na- 
tions is at present, in spite of the good efforts of many 
good men, utterly impotent to deal with the vital prob- 
lems of world peace and health or to enforce its decisions 
upon conflicting nationalities, interests, and rivalries, 
so long as the most powerful nation in the world to-day 
stays outside the family council. That is as clear as 
sunlight to a thinking mind. On the other hand, the 
entry of the United States into a league of peoples, or 
at least a world council called to consider the way of 
recovery and a rebuilding of international relations, 
will make real what is now unreal and give immense 
strength to any common agreement. America can 
support her will by strong argument, because we are 
all so deeply in her debt, and in the future will need 
desperately her surplus of food supplies on easy terms. 
Do not let us forget that the United States of America, 
being made up of human beings, might be more than 
aloof and disinterested in the welfare of Europe, which 
is bad enough, because it checks the chance of quick 
recovery. Her people might become unfriendly, hos- 
tile — swept by passion if we played the fool with them, 
beyond patience, by a series of blunders, the stupidities 
of statesmen, the tit-for-tat game in the Press. She 
can take a clear choice between the part of destroyer 
and the part of builder. In a little while she could 
raise the greatest army in the world, in a little while 
she will have the biggest navy. She could destroy the 

340 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

last chance of civilized progress in Europe, and, hav- 
ing done that, would be herself destroyed. But that 
choice is hers, if she likes to take it, and the power 
is hers. 

She can choose, as I believe she will, the part of 
builder. It is her national quality. Her people are 
builders and not destroyers. They have already built 
a great New World, splendid and strong, in spite of 
evil elements. Under her new leadership she could 
help to build another New World, better than her own, 
ours as well as hers, that New World to which we all 
look forward with the coming of youth. Will she do 
that? In what way will she help in reconstruction and 
the new building on the ruins that were made? 

I found some clue to the answer after a visit of eight 
weeks in the United States, when every day was filled 
with the experience of meeting large numbers of men 
and women eager to get some trustworthy evidence 
about the actual conditions of Europe, anxious for 
some guiding principles upon which their country may 
fix its faith in dealing with those present problems, 
and keen to "put me wise" about the stresses and 
strains of American life in this crisis of the world's 
history. 

During those two crowded months I visited about 
thirty cities, going no farther west than Chicago and 
Milwaukee. Most of them are cities about equal in 
size to our nothern industrial towns, like Bolton and 
Wigan, but with more comfort for the individual citizen, 
more opportunities for social recreation, more luxury 
for the rich and less squalor for the poor, than in the 
same type of town in England. Here, in these places, 
I found the real America, more than in New York, which 
is so vast, so complicated with alien populations, and so 
cosmopolitan in its interests, that is has no single and 
definite character. But in places like Worcester, Troy, 

34i 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

Scranton, Utica, Wilkes-Barre, and Detroit one finds 
the typical qualities of American character and life. 
I met the people of good standing — men who had built 
up their fortunes in the industry of these cities and have 
a local pride and patriotism, the leading manufacturers 
and business men, lawyers, doctors, and school-teachers, 
newspaper proprietors and editors, and the women, 
their wives and daughters — who organize, ceaselessly 
and strenuously, the innumerable charities of the 
town, women's clubs (far more important than our own 
in size and activity), literary and musical societies, 
Red Cross and relief works, and all kinds of "leagues" 
and labors of social service. 

These people are "provincial" in the sense that their 
experience of life is mostly limited to their own cities, 
though many of them go fairly often to New York, 
spend their summer holidays on the coast of Maine, or 
California, and look back to a European trip or two with 
abiding memories. The women, especially, are great 
readers of contemporary literature, and do not limit 
themselves to works of fiction, but concentrate more on 
biographies, memoirs, and books of an ethical kind which 
contain some "spiritual uplift." Everywhere they 
were reading Mrs. Asquith's autobiography, startled, 
more than a little scandalized, but highly amused by its 
indiscretions. H. G. Wells's Outline of History was a 
first favorite at the moment, and they found it an easy 
guide to the enormous adventure of the ages. Main 
Street, by Sinclair Lewis, was the "best seller" among 
their own novels, and with photographic realism pic- 
tures the narrow interests, the local scandals, the 
small world, of the ordinary American citizen in the 
Middle West towns, utterly out of touch with any other 
style of civilization, knowing nothing and caring noth- 
ing about problems of the human family remote from 
his own petty and selfish interests. 

342 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

I did not meet the Main Street type. The people 
I met — and I met hundreds of them in those brief 
eight weeks — were of better intellectual standing and 
wider human sympathy, and I look back upon a long 
portrait gallery of keen, energetic, thoughtful men, and 
of kind, frank, generous-mannered women, who were 
thinking hard and talking hard about what America 
would do now that Harding had succeeded Wilson, and 
now that the nation had to make up its mind about its 
future policy in the world. There are millions of such 
people in the United States, and, though I only met hun- 
dreds of them, I believe that I was able to get from them 
the general convictions and tendency of thought of 
their class and kind. 

Those I met were nearly all Republicans. They had 
voted against Wilson and the Wilsonian policy, partly, 
I imagine, because they believed that Wilson had flouted 
the Constitution and the instincts of his people by 
playing "a lone hand" in Europe, without getting the 
advice or consent of the Senate and Congress, partly 
because they resented the length of time he had kept them 
out of the war, but largely because they believed he 
had failed in his handling of the European situation, 
to the hurt of American prestige and interests. The 
immense defeat of the Democrats, and of Mr. Wilson, was 
not entirely a proof of desire to wash their hands of 
international obligations. A deep sense of resentment 
against Mr. Wilson himself was reinforced by irrita- 
tions with American administration during the war, 
which had hurt individual susceptibilities. As a friend 
of mine put it briefly, the question asked in the presi- 
dential election was, "Are you sick and tired of the 
present administration?" and the answer was, "By 
God! we are!" The Irish-Americans flung their weight 
against Wilson because of non-interference in the matter 

343 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

of Ireland; the German-Americans, because of his 
share in the peace treaty. 



II 

For some time after the war enthusiasm had died 
out there was the same lethargy and exhaustion of 
emotion in the United States as had overtaken other 
countries. No new impulse had replaced that emotion, 
no new national ideal. The spirit of the American 
people had drawn back into itself. They were dis- 
gusted with European rivalries and greeds. They 
said, in effect: "Let us leave those Europeans to stew 
in their own juice. We can't do anything with them, 
anyhow. Let us get an administration which will 
pull us out of that mess, collect the debts owing to us, 
keep us free from entanglements and obligations with 
alien peoples, and concentrate upon an exclusively 
American policy according to our old historic traditions." 
Not an unreasonable policy, if it were possible. 

When I arrived in the United States two things were 
happening which were already beginning to modify, 
among the educated classes, this philosophy of national 
isolation and independence. One was the financial 
situation leading to heavy losses in almost every branch 
of commerce, and a rising tide of unemployment. The 
other was the coming into office of President Harding 
and his colleagues and the anxious questioning of all 
serious citizens as to whether, after all, the new President, 
and the men whom he was selecting as his counselors, 
would be equal to the increasing difficulties of the gov- 
erning task. Even during my short stay I was able 
to observe a change of view. . . . 

Financially the United States was going through a 
bad time — worse than most of us in England realized. 
Over and over again in the smoking cars of long-distance 

344 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

trains I overheard business men deploring the heavy 
losses they had suffered. Prices were toppling down 
everywhere. Buyers of any kind of stocks — copper, 
leather, grain, motor cars, railroads — had been badly 
hit, in many cases ruined. Exporters were choked 
up with undelivered goods which they had bought 
at a high price and could not sell at cutthroat rates. 
Manufacturers had overproduced, and the cost of 
production was so great, owing to the price of labor, 
that they could not hope to compete in foreign markets. 
There were five and a half million unemployed men in 
the United States. Real distress was creeping up in 
cities like Detroit, from where there was an exodus of 
factory hands back to the land. The situation improved 
a little, but not much. 

Now the American mind was searching around for 
the reasons behind this sudden "slump," and was 
inclined to attribute it to local conditions, the aggres- 
sive wage demands of labor, and temporary causes. 
At first the American "plain man" resented the sug- 
gestion that the simple cause of this stagnation in trade 
was, and is, the collapse of the world markets, the social 
rot that has overtaken Russia, Poland, Austria, the 
heavy burden of taxation that destroys the purchasing 
power of France, Italy, Germany, and England. At 
first I found people challenge me when in my lectures I 
pointed out the economic impossibility of the United 
States existing with anything like the measure of her 
present prosperity without entering into a close trade 
relationship with the European nations. They were 
silent for a little while when I stated that America was 
almost as dependent upon Europe, as Europe upon 
America. They were inclined to shrink back from the 
logical result of my argument, when I urged them, for 
their own sakes, as well as for white civilization itself, 
to come into an association of nations — never mind 
23 345 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

whether it is called the League of Nations — to extend 
long credits to the poorer countries, to lead the way to 
gradual disarmament, and to aid the recovery of the 
world by a free exchange of raw material and manufac- 
tured goods. But I perceived before the end of my stay 
a general recognition of these facts, not due to my poor 
speeches, but to pressure of events. 

The American mind, at least among the thinking, 
reading classes, was already abandoning the idea of 
"isolation." The well-to-do business man in places 
like Worcester and Troy had already reached the posi- 
tion of the high financier in New York, that America 
must come into the settlement of the world crisis, and 
must ease the burden of the stricken peoples even to 
the extent, if need be, of holding over the payment of 
their debts. The women had come to that conclusion 
before the men. 

Then, after the sound and fury of the presidential 
election and all the bitter, personal vendetta against 
Mr. Wilson, there was a sense of anxiety about Presi- 
dent Harding and his administration. People were 
asking themselves whether Mr. Harding would rise 
to anything like the leadership they desired, whether 
he was able to call to the heart and soul of the people, 
giving them some enthusiasm and ideal higher than 
"big business." It may seem sentimental and untrue, 
but I am certain that I am right when I say that great 
numbers of American people, after temporary reaction, 
are craving for some impulse higher than mere material 
satisfaction. They wish that to be secured first — and 
they see no security in the present state of affairs — 
but beyond and above that, they yearn for a touch of 
nobility in national policy — for some high leadership 
which would guide them in a spiritual way. They did 
not expect that from Mr. Harding, though they found 
him honest and a man of good will, but rather "Main 

346 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

Street" in his mind. They comforted themselves with 
the hope that there would be good teamwork, and 
some of them clung to the name of Hoover as the shining 
star to which they yoked their faith. But here again 
they hesitated. Would Hoover — the man who organ- 
ized the food supplies of starving Europe, the food 
dictator of the world (for that he was) — play up to the 
party machine, compromise with men like Daugherty, 
the new Attorney-General, and be tactful with the 
wirepullers of the machine which breaks any man who 
tries to put a spoke in its wheels or give them a different 
kind of spin? They were afraid that Hoover might get 
out, or be put out, before he had gone very far. 

Secretary Hughes was the greatest hope of the Repub- 
lican party in the field of foreign affairs, though some of 
them thought he had too much of the "lawyer mind." 
I have met Mr. Hughes several times, and have had 
long talks with him — not for publication. He has a 
penetrating mind, clear, cool judgment, complete in- 
tellectual honesty, and I found in him (what others are 
surprised to find) a humane outlook upon life, a sensi- 
tive sympathy with the sufferings of stricken people. 
Yet people doubted whether he would obtain the 
allegiance of the Senate in altruistic ideals. 

So many told me, as to a friend, candidly, and I 
saw in this anxiety the wistfulness of people who have 
been disappointed with the official actions of their 
country, felt just a little conscience-stricken because of 
a failure to come up to their own ideals, and desired 
earnestly to fulfill their duty to the world, whatever 
that might be. They wanted to get on to the plane of 
idealism again, if only it could be squared with reality 
and common sense. They would even raise an exten- 
uating word for Wilson — though they hated him, so 
many of them. "He did put up certain broad ideals 
to which we must feel our way forward. Perhaps his 

347 






MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

ideals will be remembered when his personal faults 
have been forgotten." Now and then in big audiences 
I heard a section fire of applause, or isolated handclaps, 
when I mentioned Wilson's name. They pitied him, 
anyhow, for the immensity of his personal tragedy. 

The League of Nations still had its adherents, and 
was gaining more every day. I tested that in the same 
way, and it never failed to get a quick response, espe- 
cially from the women. But they would prefer to come 
in to an assembly of nations called by some other name. 
It is a matter of pride with the Senate especially, which 
killed the League in order to kill Wilson. They cannot 
accept the name of Wilson's instrument. But they 
must "come in." They felt that in every place where 
I touched the pulse of public opinion. As one great 
American leader put it to me — his influence extends to 
a million people — "it isn't a question of 'coming in/ 
It's much rather a question of 'getting out.' We are 
in already. We were in when we sent over our first 
transports of troops. We are in up to the neck, be- 
cause we have debts to the value of five billion dollars. 
We are in because our trade depends upon the markets 
of the world. The question is, how are we to get out 
of this world crisis with any business and security and 
honor." But that amounts to the same thing. The 
very laws of economics will force America to come into a 
council of nations, and by the power of her natural 
resources, her immense reserves of industry, her means 
of granting credits, it is certain that she will take the 
lead in the reconstruction of Europe, which means as 
much to her as to ourselves. 



in 

In nearly every section of American society which I 
touched — I was unable to come in contact with the 

343 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

factory hands and working classes, which was a great 
omission — I found a genuine friendship, often an emo- 
tional sentiment, for England and Great Britain. 
This was voiced by the President, with whom I had a 
personal interview, lasting only for a minute or two, 
in the White House, a few days after his inauguration. 
A number of visitors were wanting to see him, trooping 
in through the open gates (shut during Wilson's term 
of office) and sitting about the antechambers. They 
were Senators and Congressmen from the West and 
Middle West, an old general of Civil War days, a hand- 
some young colonel of the air-craft corps, several ladies 
of social standing, a little girl sitting with folded hands, 
looking wide-eyed through big spectacles with tortoise- 
shell rims, a group of newspaper men smoking cigarettes 
incessantly. The President's secretary chatted with 
the visitors as he sat at a desk on which was a great 
bouquet of roses. This social atmosphere of the White 
House was simple, informal — a striking contrast, I was 
told, to the austerity of Mr. Wilson's time. The new 
President was giving "the glad hand" to everybody, 
keeping open house, breaking the autocratic spell of 
his predecessor. 

One of his secretaries beckoned me, and I went in and 
found Mr. Harding receiving his visitors — a tall, heavily 
built man with a powerful face, deeply lined, puffed 
under his eyes, square of jaw, with a good-humored 
mouth and kind eyes, and silver hair. He gripped my 
hand and asked a few questions, and was a little startled, 
I fancy, when I asked him suddenly for a message to 
the English people. He laughed, and could not think 
of one on the spur of the moment, alluding to newspaper 
controversy, and bitter things said on both sides, in 
disjointed sentences. Then he spoke earnestly, with 
real emotion, f thought, while he still held my hand in 
a strong grasp. 

349 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

"Friendship between the United States and Great 
Britain," he said, "is essential for the welfare of the 
world. Americans of the old stock look upon England 
as the mother country, and we regard that always as 
a cherished inheritance, not to be forgotten." 

What the President said was told me in other words 
by hundreds of other people — I could say thousands, 
without exaggeration — and with absolute sincerity. 
Senator Knox was one of those who spoke to me about 
the misunderstanding of the American attitude to 
England, the mistaken idea that there was an underlying 
hostility likely to lead one day to war. 

"The mere idea of it is impossible and ridiculous," 
he said, and he mentioned the wave of indignation and 
incredulity which had passed through America like an 
electric shock when such words as "drifting toward 
war" were used (or reported as having been used, which 
is quite a different thing) by one of our representatives. 
He admitted that there were historical prejudices, 
fostered in the school book, which created a bad impres- 
sion in the minds of American children, hard to eradi- 
cate. But that impression of England's bad action in 
the past was counterbalanced by other influences of 
literature and tradition, and in any case the universities 
were helping to form a fairer point of view about the 
War of Independence and other periods. He once 
astonished a fellow Senator during a visit to Windsor 
Castle by laying a bunch of flowers reverently before a 
statue of George III. 

"What on earth are you doing that for?" asked his 
friend. 

"I am paying a tribute to the Father of the American 
Republic," said Senator Knox. "If that fellow hadn't 
been such an old blockhead we might still have been 
under British rule." 

The only trace of hostility I found was among the 

35o 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

extreme section of the Irish-Americans, and certainly 
that was fierce, unreasoning, and dangerous. At my 
first lecture in the Carnegie Hall, New York, I had only 
been going five minutes or so before the first interruption 
began, in a rich Irish brogue, from a top gallery. I 
heard the words, "Why don't you take the marbles out 
of your mouth?" And thinking this was merely a 
friendly criticism of my hopelessly "English" accent, I 
squared my chest and spoke louder. But that was only 
the beginning of trouble, deliberate and hostile, to what- 
ever I said, and I was speaking about Austria, and not 
Ireland. Amidst a hubbub of sound and fury I heard 
the words, "English poltroon," "Cutthroat English," 
and, "What about Egypt?" I tried to tell a story about 
a young Austrian doctor. Several times I began a 
description of his sufFering. Then I had to abandon 
him to his fate. Standing alone on a big platform, I 
heard waves of tumultuous noise, and could see in the 
galleries a series of running fights, separate skirmishes, 
the pounce of small groups on isolated individuals. 
I felt curiously far off and aloof, intensely interested 
in that drama which seemed to have nothing to do with 
me. Down in the stalls a fat man wedged in his chair 
was bellowing incoherently until silenced by his neigh- 
bors. A voice below the platform called up to me, 
"We have sent for the police." Presently I went on 
talking, with spasmodic interruptions from the galleries. 
I was able to get through my address, and I found that 
any simple words of mine about England and Anglo- 
American friendship aroused wonderful applause. The 
great audience desired to express to me their utter dis- 
gust with the Irish demonstration, their friendly feeling 
to an Englishman on the platform, to England for 
whom he spoke with fairness to Ireland. The hostile 
element was in a minority of fifty to three thousand or 
more. 

351 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

After that I had other experiences, as at Chicago, on 
the eve of St. Patrick's Day, when it was forty-five min- 
utes before I could finish my first sentence. Immediately 
I stepped on the platform, the din began, deafening 
and menacing. Fifty young Irishmen shouted orations 
at me from the galleries. Two hundred or more hooted 
and yelled. In the top gallery a gang of girls catcalled 
in shrill unison. The men were angry and violent. 
They desired, it seemed, to tear me limb from limb, and 
fought desperately with the police when at last they 
were ejected. For the first time in my life I was com- 
pelled to accept a bodyguard of detectives. They ex- 
plained politely that it was not so much for my sake 
as for theirs that they wished to sit by my side in a 
taxicab, to walk with me on the way to the hotel. 
" It's our reputation we want to safeguard," they 
said. "If anything happens to you we should get the 
kick." 

Even on my last night in New York, when I received 
the greatest honor of my life at a banquet to me by a 
thousand people under the auspices of the Allied Loyalty 
League, there came to my table all through the dinner 
hostile messages from the world outside. I opened 
one letter and it said, "You are a dirty English rat." 
I opened another, and it said, "You are the hell-hound 
of a dirty race." Outside the Biltmcre Hotel small boys, 
paid a few cents for their job, distributed leaflets accus- 
ing me of horrible lies. 

"This man has insulted every loyal American," said 
one of the leaflets. "All who associate with him, dine 
with him, or honor him in any way are disloyal Amer- 
icans. This man should be deported at once." 

The violence of the Irish-American sentiment, the 
amazing lack of reason in their methods, may be judged 
by this series of attacks upon me, for in Ireland I was 
known as a good friend, and in England I had not hesi- 

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

tated to criticize and condemn the British government 
for what I considered the stupidity and brutality of 
many of their actions in Ireland. So in America I spoke 
honestly and fairly, setting out the plain truth, allowing 
all that could be allowed to the Irish point of view, 
pleading for reconciliation and peace which should give 
liberty to Ireland under Dominion Home Rule, if they 
were willing to abandon their guerrilla warfare. But 
nothing that I said made the slightest difference. They 
howled at me as an Englishman, and in their pamphlets 
and leaflets made no secret of their desire to force a war 
between America and Great Britain. 

It had that amount of importance that it was linked 
up with other sinister movements — Bolshevik and Pan- 
German — and with the persistent, venomous anti- 
British propaganda of Hearst's newspapers, with their 
immense popular circulation among the masses of 
working people. It was important enough in its in- 
fluence upon unthinking crowds, unable to discriminate 
between falsity and truth, and quickly moved to passion, 
to be a warning to the British government to settle the 
Irish question rapidly, sensibly, without temper or 
passion, with a return to sanity and statesmanship. For 
so long as it remained unsettled there would be this 
cancerous poison, spreading ill will in the minds of a 
section of the American people. Apart from that it 
had no influence upon the American mind as a whole. 
On the contrary, the unjust, ridiculous, and ill-mannered 
methods of the Sinn Fein minority among the Irish- 
Americans disgusted all decent citizens and produced 
a warm reaction in favor of England. An Irish-German- 
American demonstration, Deutschland-go-Bragh, as it 
was called by a wit, in Madison Square Garden, where 
disloyal speeches were made, was followed by the mon- 
ster counter-demonstration at which General Pershing 
and other speakers proclaimed the loyalty of America to 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

those with whom they had fought in the war, amidst 
scenes of enormous enthusiasm. 

In a personal but wonderful way I gained by the same 
reaction against violence and lack of fair play. The 
Sinn Fein disturbers of my meetings were never more 
than 5 per cent. The other 95, angered by what hap- 
pened, gave me tremendous ovations for England's 
sake, so that I was uplifted on waves of enthusiastic 
applause. 

IV 

America has many difficult problems to face, some 
fears haunt the minds of the people, inherited, tradi- 
tional habits of mind drag her back from a free vision 
of new necessities, and her political leaders are not, on 
the whole, representative of the best instincts of her 
wisest folk. Her difficulties with labor are intensifying, 
for men who enjoyed high wages and became used to a 
higher standard of life do not lightly drop back to a 
lower scale, especially when there is such a wide gulf 
between their highest wage and the great luxury of the 
very rich. Among her alien populations not quickly 
assimilated in the melting pot there are dangerous 
currents of thought. But the risk is being minimized 
by the falling prices, and wise concessions by employers 
of labor in many great industries. 

One fear she has, especially on the Pacific coast, is 
that of Japan, and when I was last in the United States 
there was uneasy talk about an "inevitable war" 
among people who, I think, exaggerated the menace. 
It was that thought which gave aid to the demand for 
a big navy, at a time when the world was ready for a 
call to disarmament. In America, as in all countries 
anxious of great power, there is an imperialist group 
eager to acquire new territory as a proof of power, and 
now and then one hears loose talk about "clearing up 

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

Mexico." But that is quite opposed to the instincts 
of the people as a whole, who hate the thought of such 
adventures. 

The political machine in America, controlled in 
Washington, is antiquated in its views of life, I fancy, 
and a heavy drag upon the progress of liberal and gen- 
erous ideals. At a time when the whole world was in 
need of free trade, including America herself, it was 
proposed to put up a tarifF against Canadian wheat and 
other tariffs against foreign goods — a muddle-headed 
arithmetic which would hurt American commerce and 
limit its activities. At a time when, as I am certain, 
the great body of American people who read and think 
and feel are eager to help in the reconstruction of Europe 
and the recovery of the world's markets by carrying on 
the work they began when they sent their boys to 
France, or went themselves, old Senators from the 
West, Congressmen from "Main Street," are harking 
back to the policy of isolation, calling themselves "ioo 
per cent American" and believing that that means the 
narrow selfishness of the Chinese wall. They will, it 
is certain, try to pull at the coat-tails of President 
Harding whenever he wishes to take a step forward into 
a larger relationship with the human family. They will 
shout to him, "We put you in to keep us out!" and the 
ignorant masses, no more ignorant than ours, but more 
remote from Europe, will give their backing to those old 
and unwise men. 

As an Englishman I ought not, perhaps, to write 
these things, yet the American people will forgive me, 
for I have been frank with them on all things, and 
candid in any criticism of English faults. I believe, 
too, unlike some of their own pessimists, among whom 
is the most brilliant brain they have in the field of 
journalism — my friend Frank Simonds — that liberal 
ideas will prevail over narrow instincts, and that the 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

generous impulses of the intellectuals will move the 
sluggish, inert mass of unthinking folk. 

Steadily through this year of 1921 the Harding 
administration gave unmistakable signs of abandoning 
the policy of "isolation" and of coming in to the coun- 
cils of the nations with good will and helpfulness, as I 
had ventured to prophesy after my visit. In spite of 
the apparent inconsistency of voting great credits for a 
big navy, due, as I have said, to anxiety about Japan, 
President Harding intimated very quickly his intention 
of summoning the Powers of the world to a conference 
for the discussion of a practical measure of all-round 
reduction in armaments and the establishment of an 
international tribunal to arbitrate on all matters of 
potential dispute. That intention was fulfilled in July 
of this year, when the President made a definite pro- 
posal to the Allied Powers for a conference on disarma- 
ment, thereby making a practical appeal to the human 
race to abandon war as an argument. It is a good 
memory of mine that I was able to put in some words 
on behalf of that proposal at the Capitol in Washington, 
when I had the rare honor of being invited to give evi- 
dence before the committee of Congress on naval 
affairs, on the possibility and scope of such a conference. 

Before his great appeal, the President, acting upon 
the advice of Secretary Hughes, decided that as America 
had an interest in the question of German reparations, 
it would be logical to have a representative on the 
Reparations Committee, and that as the supreme coun- 
cil of the Allies was dealing with the world affairs which 
intensely affected the interests of the United States, 
it would be only reasonable to have an American am- 
bassador present at least while the deliberations were in 
progress. People in England, as well as people in Amer- 
ica, watched these moves away from isolation toward 
international partnership, and drew their breath a little 

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

and said, "Perhaps, after all, there is a chance for the 
League of Nations!" Strange! for in America the doom 
of the League has long ago been sealed in yard-long 
headings across American newspapers: 

"The League is dead!" 

A friend of mine, named Lowell Mallett, one of the 
shrewdest observers of American politics, described 
the psychological effect in Washington of finding sud- 
denly that that cry may have been rather premature. 

"Solemnly or exultantly, prayerfully or profanely, 
earnestly or indifferently, one has heard it proclaimed in 
America every day since Harding was elected. Those 
who desired the League's death have announced the 
consummation of their wish so frequently that they have 
come to believe it true. Of course they have had to 
presuppose that because America was not a member 
there wasn't any League, but they have been quite 
equal to this presupposition. 

"'The League is . . . !' 

"The familiar phase was broken in two on a day not 
long ago. It was the day that President Harding and 
Secretary Hughes announced their decision to partici- 
pate, to some extent, in the councils of the Allies. The 
suspended exclamation might have been heard in the 
cloakrooms of Congress where our statesmen gather to 
smoke and talk about themselves. It was completed 
by one such statesman in this manner — 

"'Alive! My gosh! the blamed thing lives!' 

"This Senator accepted the decision to participate 
in Allied councils as the beginning of the end of the 
struggle that has been going on under cover within the 
administration since March 4th. And his view is shared 
by many other bitter opponents of the League. It is not 
accepted gracefully, however. It is fairly safe to predict 
that Washington will witness the bitterest sort of a 
death battle over the question, but more than one oppo- 

357 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

nent of the League, who is bravely kissing his wife and 
little ones farewell and preparing to march forth to 
take part in that battle, is already admitting that he is 
going forth to glory, not to victory. 

"For they are not blind to the situation. They knew 
all the time they were chanting the League's requiem 
that they ran the risk of having the late lamented rise 
up from the bier to ask what all the fuss was about. 
They knew they could only keep it dead so long as they 
kept Harding convinced that the people of the United 
States had decreed its death. Harding in his campaign 
for election committed himself fairly firmly in favor of 
both life and death for the League. The opponents of 
the League have been more vociferous in claiming it 
was their victory when the returns made him President, 
but the Republican supporters of the League idea, while 
saying not a great deal, were equally sure that the elec- 
tion meant nothing of the kind." 

American financiers and business men were no longer 
so hostile to the League idea, at least to a share in the 
councils of Europe. For the sake of their increasing 
investments in European commercial ventures, the time 
had come to cease playing politics with international 
affairs. In the twelve months preceding June, 1921, 
three hundred and fifty million dollars had been loaned 
to foreign borrowers by private American capital, 
despite widespread economic depression in the United 
States. As Mallett said, "With approximately a mil- 
lion dollars daily flowing from their vaults into foreign 
fields, American bankers are fairly unanimous in favor- 
ing a policy that will protect those dollars." If not by 
the League, or the League "idea," at least not by 
isolation. 

A mighty whack at the League was declared by 
Colonel Harvey, the American ambassador at the 
Court of St. James's, in his first public speech in 

358 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

London. He banged, barred, and bolted the door, it 
seemed, upon any American participation in any kind 
of League of Nations. More interesting than his speech, 
however, were the comments upon it in the American 
Press. There was a widespread expression of opinion 
that the ambassador had gone beyond his book and had 
not spoken the mind of the American people as a whole, 
nor of the Harding administration, which, as I was 
informed on good authority, "was busily searching the 
dictionary for some other word than "League"! 



I am not a fanatic on the subject of the League. I 
believe that the general good will of people and their 
spiritual renaissance are more important to the world 
than any machinery of international justice. Never- 
theless, good will itself needs an organization by which 
it may express its ideals and give orderly effect to its 
agreements. For that purpose the League of Nations 
provides an organized system by which all nations may 
come into conference and consider their national prob- 
lems in relation to the rest of the world, and gain the 
free consent and support of other peoples for their 
national interests and rights and claims, while consent- 
ing themselves to equal rights for all other peoples, 
provided they do not inflict damage upon the family of 
nations. 

It should be a parliament of peoples, whose power is 
based not upon force, but on agreement, at least, on 
moral force rather than on physical force. The decrees 
of its assembly should advise rather than command, and 
the work of its councilors should be scientific and not 
political. It will never be a super state, dominating 
in its power over peoples who try to resist its decrees 
or who dispute its authority, though the expression of a 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

great majority of national representatives would have 
an influence not lightly to be disregarded, if they had 
the real support of their own governments and peoples. 
The failures of the League, in so far as it has failed, have 
been due to the insincerity of delegates, or to their im- 
potence, because while dealing with the world problems 
on lines of scientific argument the statesmen of Europe 
were dealing with the same problems on lines of passion 
and political intrigue. That weakness of the League 
will not be overcome until its delegates are truly repre- 
sentative of their parliaments, so that when they speak 
their words are responsible, and that will only be attained 
when the peoples themselves insist upon that respon- 
sibility and insure its fulfillment. Another and fatal 
cause of weakness in the present League is that it is 
only half a League, or at least incomplete, with many 
empty chairs. Without Germany, Russia, and the United 
States, no proposal or agreement on affairs affecting the 
interests of those nations could have authority. 

In spite of that, and of many other limitations, be- 
cause the spiritual state of the world has been at a 
low ebb in the years after the war, not rising to the high 
ideal of international justice preached by the leaders 
of the war spirit and then flung to the devil as out- 
worn rubbish, the League of Nations has done useful 
work. Alone it has upheld the banner of that idealism 
before the imagination of the peoples, and has gathered 
to itself forces of plain folk who believe in its watchwords, 
though some of its spokesmen are cynical and others 
disheartened. Outside the Assembly where the talking 
is done, there has been a body of scientific work prepared 
by experts whose enthusiasm is real and devoted. They 
have the young spirit for which the world has been 
waiting. In committees formed by economists, organ- 
izers, scientists, of many nations, among those forty- 
eight who belong to the League, and of some who do not 

360 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

belong thereto (like the United States of America), 
keen brains and untired hearts have been studying 
world problems of health, commerce, wages, hours of 
work, armaments, transport, communication, and 
finance, not in a political way, limited by national 
egotism, but in a scientific way, across the frontiers of 
prejudice and rivalry. They have been learning to 
think internationally. They have been preparing the 
groundwork for the new architecture of human progress. 
They have actual achievements to their credit for the 
reshaping of international relations in the thoughts of 
statesmen and financiers, if not yet in law. 

The financial conference produced a scheme of inter- 
national credits which is the basis of all present discus- 
sion in America and Europe. 

The Barcelona conference set out a number of valua- 
ble methods of securing freedom of communication and 
transit. 

The international health organization will, without 
doubt, be a new charter for the prevention of epidemic 
disease and other scourges of the human race. 

Another committee has devised means of co-ordinating 
preventive measures against the traffic in opium, cocaine, 
and other dangerous drugs. 

Recommendations have been made for breaking down 
the world-wide conspiracy of the white-slave traffic. 

Plans have been prepared for the institution of a 
permanent court of international justice, and com- 
mittees have been at work on the possibility of limiting 
armaments among the great Powers and prohibiting the 
introduction of arms and ammunition among savage or 
semicivilized races. 

That work may be thrown on one side by the wicked- 
ness of governments or the indifference of peoples, but, 
whatever insanity may take possession of the world, 
that work has been for sanity and well done. 
24 361 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

The United States of America, whose late President 
was part author of the League idea, did not share in 
that work officially, and their ambassador declared that 
his government "will not have anything whatsoever 
to do with the League, directly or indirectly, openly or 
furtively." Experience of history and realities of life 
challenged the ambassador. The case has been well 
put by Reginald Berkeley, secretary of the League of 
Nations Union. 

Suppose that in two or three years' time a serious dispute between 
two great Powers threatened the peace of the world — suppose one 
broke out to-morrow. Suppose that dispute came before the League 
of Natiuns, and, whilst it was still in the process of settlement, and 
in spite of the provisions of the Covenant, one of these great Powers 
suddenly mobilized its forces, thus threatening by implication at any 
moment to break the Covenant and throw itself upon its opponent: 
an act of war against the whole League. It is surely inconceivable 
that in such circumstances the United States would not throw in 
its weight on the side of the League for the preservation of peace. 
This does not mean that the United States would then be liable to 
send its troops to Europe. Now as formerly that would be entirely 
its own affair. But it does mean that the immense moral forces of 
America would be ranged, as they have always been ranged, on the 
side of law and order. One nation alone, however powerful, cannot 
kill a League of forty-eight others by abstaining from it, and it is as 
certain as anything in this world can be said to be, that if the League 
proves by its deeds its usefulness to mankind, no nation will be able 
or willing to stand aside from it for long. 

Outside the League or inside, America cannot and 
will not ignore its evidence and its hopes. President 
Harding himself has said so in clear words. "We never 
were and never will be able to maintain isolation." And 
again, "We are ready to associate ourselves with the 
nations of the world, great and small, for conference and 
for counsel, to seek the world's opinion. . . . We must 
understand that ties of trade alone bind nations in 
closest intimacy, and none may receive except he gives." 

362 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

If that spirit is fulfilled, it is good enough. In friendly 
alliance with the League of Nations — a League vivified 
by the interests and allegiance of millions of nobodies 
— America will exercise her influence in Europe, and share 
the counsels of the world. In England there is a growing 
allegiance for the purpose of the League, rather moving 
and revealing in its manifestations, as when tens of 
thousands gathered together in the parks of English 
cities on a summer day this year, and proclaimed their 
faith anew in its purpose and possibilities. 1 he idea 
had taken root in little houses of back streets, in simple 
minds stricken by the misery of war and looking for a 
new wisdom of men, in the hearts of many mothers of 
boys. They came out in their masses for no selfish 
interest of class or trade, but for the new hope of human- 
ity symbolized at least by the League as a supreme court 
of international justice. For as my friend G. H. Perris 
said in the last words he wrote before his death in the 
service of the League — 

Internationalism is not a negative thing, a state of continual 
protestation; it is a positive growth towards a fuller and finer life. 
This is but a first hesitating step. I look forward to the day — not 
in my lifetime — when all Nations of the world will be in permanent 
combination not only for arbitration instead of war, for the regula- 
tion of their traffic and their laws, for the abolition of disease and of 
slave-trade, but in the effort to grapple with that terrible enemy — 
the periodic trade crisis — and to join in turning the forces of nature 
to the highest account for the universal benefit. The immediate 
task and the distant vision, both are essential to a full life. 

That, after all, is the idea of the League, and though 
the United States may never enter the League itself, 
many millions of her people, as I know, not by second- 
hand report, but by what I have seen and heard, have 
already given their allegiance to the idea, and in every 
city of the United States there is, I am certain, a group of 
men and women whose forward-looking imagination sees 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

that vision of world governance in some such form as 
outlined in the dying words of that friend I have quoted. 



VI 

Despite the strains and stresses of national life, the 
pride and egotism of a virile people untouched by the 
sadness of the Old World, the noisy expression of a selfish 
"Americanism" by newspapers and public orators, the 
individual men and women, as I have met them, in the 
United States, have a profound belief in the increasing 
sense of human nature, which will abolish the old bar- 
barisms, break down the old frontiers, and make human 
life cleaner, more efficient, better organized for general 
happiness. People who believe that are already work- 
ing members of a League of good will, and in so far as 
the American people fulfill that spirit, which is theirs as 
a national faith and a working rule of life, they are with 
us all the way, and sometimes take the lead, as in the 
rescue of starving people and the call to disarmament — ■ 
a lead not to be kept if they are directed by mere self- 
ishness, or misled by passionate claims and conflicts 
with other nations of the world. 

Quietly, behind the scenes, in ways that will never be 
recorded, American business men have all through this 
year been working for world peace on economic lines, 
and their financial knowledge and advice have had no 
small influence upon the policy of Europe. I have had 
the advantage of meeting many of these American 
bankers and business men, both in the United States and 
England, and always I have come away from such meet- 
ings with the conviction that these men are not only 
wide-eyed and alert to the realities of international 
commerce, and free from the inherited hatreds and sus- 
picions which clog the machinery of Europe, but as far as 
human nature permits of altruism with self-defense, 

364 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

wonderfully idealistic in their outlook. I mean that 
they want to help, and not merely to profit. They 
want to restore the health of Europe as well as to safe- 
guard their own trade, both objects going hand in hand. 

That was the spirit with which the delegates on the 
International Chamber of Conferences made their pro- 
posals in London, and especially of the group of experts 
in association with Mr. Filene. They based their 
philosophy of international finance for the restoration 
of Europe on the resolutions of the Brussels conference, 
which, in their conviction, gave to the world the first 
statement of the necessary steps which must be taken 
by each country, in order to start Europe on the road to 
a sound financial and economic condition. The most 
important advice they gave to Europe was the necessity 
of a strict policy regarding taxation and economy, the 
avoidance of additional borrowing, and the deflation 
of currency. Mr. Filene and his friends made plain their 
belief that ruin and revolution are unavoidable unless 
the nations of Europe disarm and economize, and they 
wished this belief to be publicly and widely expressed, 
so that governments might be strengthened in action 
which would be, inevitably, unpopular and unpleasant, 
when they tried to square the illusions of public hope 
with the stern realities of economic laws. So far many 
governments have been overthrown by their people 
whenever they tried to enforce such a policy or to hint 
plainly at disagreeable truth. It is only by a campaign 
of truthtelling that economy may be accepted by people 
still thirsting for the "fruits of victory" promised them 
by politicians in return for votes. 

On the other hand, many business men of the United 
States have not been grudging in their promise to grant 
credits to impoverished nations, in order to recover their 
own prosperity of trade and revive the activities of 
European laborers. I am not good enough as an 

365 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

economist to weigh up the relative values of the vari- 
ous resolutions adopted by the London conference or 
proposed by the American groups. I can only judge of 
their general spirit as I judge most things, and that is by 
psychological impressions, and after meeting the Ameri- 
can delegates I had a sense of hopefulness for the stricken 
countries of Europe because these men were so keen to 
help, so quick to understand, so high above the mere 
sordid interests of a little trade advantage here and there. 
They were looking at the problem of world trade as 
scientists, without prejudice, with a knowledge of cause 
and effect. 

All details of finance, however, are of minor impor- 
tance after all, compared with the general trend and 
purpose of the United States as a world power. I am 
not blind to certain elements of weakness, and of evil, 
and of danger, in the character of the American people 
(as in that of all peoples not exalted above the ordinary 
frailties of nature), though I am an enthusiastic admirer 
of all their splendid qualities, and have a devoted friend- 
ship for them which nothing will change or weaken. 
Their strength, their self-confidence, and their sense 
of youth give them a certain intolerance of mind to- 
ward those who differ from them in opinion or in action. 
In the mass they have no use for halftones of thought and 
sentiment, and do not compromise between convictions 
and doubts, or balance conflicting evidence in delicate 
scales of judgment. They think in blacks and whites, in 
sharp and clear lines, approving wholly or condemning 
utterly. As a people they cannot understand, and do 
not like, the easy tolerances of the English mind which 
enabled our crowds, for instance, to smile at Sinn Fein 
flags passing down the Strand when Sinn Fein gunmen 
were shooting British soldiers. That seemed to the 
American mind intellectual insincerity. They cannot 
understand a people who admired the Irish for their 

366 



THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

resistance to British coercion (while supporting coer- 
cion), who clinked beer mugs with German soldiers a 
few days after armistice, who allow anarchists to talk 
their folly in the parks, and who criticize their own 
government, as I have done, with profound love for 
their country, whose faults they also admit and ex- 
aggerate. The American mind has a religious reverence 
for "the state," which sometimes lends itself to intel- 
lectual tyranny and to a hard intolerance of minorities, 
cranks, conscientious objectors, passive resisters, radi- 
cals, and "reformers." 

Majority opinion in the United States is all-powerful, 
and too powerful, and the clear-cut mind of the American 
citizen, with his straight verdict on all questions of life, 
is likely to lead to trouble, perhaps even to conflict, 
within the state or without, when it comes sharp up 
against a challenge of forces which may only be avoided 
by delicate compromise, by understanding of opposing 
views, and by a little yielding to other folks' ideas. 
As a nation the American people are self-conscious and 
oversensitive to criticism, at least in comparison with 
the English people, who have a weakness for self-criti- 
cism and depreciation. I write these things frankly, 
with the privilege of friendship which must be sincere 
without being fulsome. But I have written at length 
my impressions of American life and character in another 
book, and need not repeat them here, but will only say 
that I believe with all my heart and soul that the spirit 
of the people in the mass, and among those I know with 
individual friendship, is inspired by a splendid common 
sense, by a fine simplicity of outlook, and by an instinc- 
tive desire to act in honor and in justice to all the world. 
Despite some elements of hostility due to foreign in- 
fluence, among groups of people still stirred by the 
rivalries of race in Europe, the heart of the American 
people, as a whole, and the sentiment of most of its 

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MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

intellectual leaders, desire friendship with the British 
people and offer it with generous emotion, believing, as I 
believe and know, that we two peoples have more in 
common, by heritage, by speech, by law, and by ideals, 
than any other peoples in the world, and that any con- 
flict between us would be a death blow to civilization 
from which the white race itself would not recover. In 
many cities of the United States I found a proof of that 
faith and of that friendship expressed with a sincerity 
of emotion beyond all doubt, with a generosity that was 
wonderfully kind. We may have differences, and per- 
haps must have them, and the evil part of the Press in 
both countries, which now in its lowest form is very 
evil, and other forces in the dark caves of thought and 
passion, in both countries, will make the most of them, 
and try to fan up hatred and passion and popular sus- 
picions, but unless we give them just cause of quarrel 
by some madness or badness in our own future leadership, 
there is a body of opinion in America strong and sane 
and chivalrous, which will overwhelm such treachery 
to the hopes of humanity. 

I remember on my last visit, in a small city a thousand 
miles west of New York, having luncheon with a company 
of leading men of the community, and our host was an 
old gentleman whom all the others honored. He was 
courteous and gay in his old-fashioned way, making 
little jests to keep the table bright. But presently his 
face became grave, and he rose and raised his glass and 
said with profound emotion: "Gentlemen, I give you a 
toast: To the deathless friendship between the United 
States and Great Britain," and at that all the men rose 
and drank in silence. I have seen many demonstrations 
of enthusiasm and friendly tribute between our two 
peoples, but somehow that scene in a private house of a 
Middle West town always comes back to my mind as a 
kind of symbol and pledge. In millions of other houses 

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THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD PEACE 

throughout the United States there is this hope for 
unbroken friendship between our two peoples, and on 
our side we have in our bones so strong a sense of our 
common heritage of history and tradition that we are 
apt to presume on it too much and be a little too free in 
comment and in criticism, as though actually we were 
members of the same family who may dispense with 
formal courtesies. 

We are not the same people. Our psychology has 
many differences. Our angle of vision is from opposite 
sides of the world. Little accidental ways of manner 
and speech and custom may irritate one another 
now and then. But in all large things, in all the things 
that matter, we may, I think, count upon each other 
and work together. That is one of the best guaranties 
of hope for the future of the whole family, unless it is 
spoiled by some unknown folly waiting in the years to 
come for its time of madness and of ruin. 



X 

THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 



AMONG certain common ideas which seemed to ger- 
minate and develop strongly in millions of minds all 
over the world during the war — minds separated from 
one another by barbed wire and deep trenches and 
poison gas, as well as by geographical distances — there 
was one which I imagined would have a revolutionary 
effect upon the world when the war ended, if, as then 
seemed doubtful, it ever ended for this generation of 
men. It was the idea of youth that the old men were 
responsible for the massacre, "the bloody mess," as 
they called it, and guilty of supporting a social and 
political philosophy in Europe which had made all that 
inevitable. Youth hated the old men. 

In the war the boys who were ordered to go out on 
raids when the chances were all against them and no 
useful purpose served, hated the elderly generals of 
divisions, corps, and armies, who sat well behind the 
lines and engaged in competitions as to the number of 
raids they could report to G. H. Q., and the number 
of casualties they could record as a proof of activity 
and "the fighting spirit." They hated these same 
white-haired old buffers who held chatty and cheery 
conferences in the sunny chateaux of France, and 
arranged bloody battles against the enemy's strongest 
positions with a light-hearted optimism which invari- 
ably underestimated the enemy's fighting quality and 

370 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

never failed to incur enormous casualties on our side for 
no perceptible advantage of position or ascendancy. 
Young officers and young private soldiers cursed the old 
men for their orders and counter-orders, for their 
"spit-and-polish" discipline, for their "eye wash," and 
their sham heroics. This attitude of mind was not 
limited to British soldiers. As far as I can find out, it 
was prevalent in all armies. 

But the detestation of youth for the old men went 
much farther back than the headquarters staff's. It went 
back intensively to the elderly civilians at home who 
kept reiterating, year after year, with splendid patriot- 
ism, "We will fight to the last man." Or in French, 
" Jusqu'au bout!" I have heard language not to be 
repeated about those old gentlemen in Parliament, in 
government offices, in the City, and in the great indus- 
tries devoted, for the time being, to war contracts. 
The suggestion in one mess that those elderly patriots 
should be used as sand bags to prop up the front-line 
parapets was received with uproarious applause. The 
conviction that in the next war — if ever human insanity 
"asked" for another — the rule should be made, "Old 
men first," was unanimously approved. Young poets 
of the trenches wrote mordant sonnets to their old 
murderers, to those fat and prosperous men who made 
fortunes out of the carnival of death, to the hard-faced 
men who ordered youth into the shambles, to the old 
ruffians who gained honors and rewards until they had 
flower-borders on their breasts, in "cushy" jobs beyond 
sound of the guns. 

This condemnation of the old men was unkind, and 
in great numbers of cases unjust. Fathers bled at the 
heart for their sons, were killed themselves by a slow 
and agonizing death when the boy they loved best in 
the world went down. They played up gamely, so 
many of the old buffers, showed that they had the 

37i 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

stuff of courage and sacrifice. But broadly, in its general 
accusation, the argument of youth was right. The old 
men were responsible for the thing that happened. 

Not consciously and deliberately were they guilty, 
but they will be condemned by history, as by youth, 
because they upheld the old ideas of international 
rivalry, the old traditions of diplomacy, military power, 
force as the basis of argument, the narrowest patriotism 
or national egotism, as the supreme virtue of citizenship, 
class privilege, and caste pride, regardless of the economic 
needs of peoples, and did not foresee that their system 
of governance, or their obedience to that system, was 
bound to produce the monstrous conflict which has now 
been recorded, and if continued must lead as surely 
to another. The old men with the old ideas cannot be 
condemned individually, "for they are all honorable 
men" (with exceptions!), but they must be condemned 
generally, as their predecessors who burned old women 
as witches, or defended slavery as a sacred right, or 
forced women and children to labor fourteen hours a 
day in their factories, or (as late as 1830 in England) 
sentenced boys and girls to death and hanged them in 
batches for pilfering and petty crimes, caused by their 
own economic cruelties. As such, representatives of 
an old order evil in its morality and achievement, and 
in its sinister betrayal of new ideals and new hopes, 
youth, during the war, and afterward, brought in a 
verdict against them. 

They have pleaded guilty. Over and over again I 
have heard gray-headed men since the war say: "Noth- 
ing can be done until the old men disappear. The 
world must wait for the rising generation. It is up to 
youth to save civilization." The failure of the peace 
treaty to secure any permanency of peace, the betrayal 
of the League of Nations by those who had paid lip 
service to its ideals, the regrouping of Powers in Europe, 

372 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

the corruption and cynical disregard of the peoples' 
interests by the old politicians who still keep a firm grip 
on the party machines, have still further convinced 
men of hope in a better and cleaner phase of civilization 
governed by reason instead of passion and by economic 
unity instead of greedy rivalry, that the malady of 
our strife is incurable until the old men pass away and 
youth leaps into the saddle. I am one of those who 
think so, though youth is no longer mine. 

I think that is the great hope of civilization, but I do 
not think it is a certain hope. At the present time there 
is no assurance that the young men who were in the war 
and came back again, or were young enough to escape 
the experience, are going to lead the world forward to a 
new plane of material and spiritual quality. What has 
youth done since the war? In what way has it carried 
out its challenge? As Herbert Hoover said to me 
sadly, in New York, when I expressed my hope, "Youth 
has been busy re-electing the old men." And that is 
true, in all countries that I know. The old men are 
still in command, supported by the young men. The 
very men most cursed and damned by youth have 
received their allegiance. The House of Commons 
in England is still, at the time I write, filled with "the 
hard-faced men who did extremely well out of the war." 
By-elections have not brought a younger, fresher 
type to the fore. General Townshend, "the hero of 
Kut," hated by all the men who slogged back through 
the sun-baked desert, fainting and dying as prisoners 
of the Turk, while he received all courtesies and com- 
forts on the isle of Prinkipo, was one of those sent as 
a new member to the House, where in his speeches on 
Ireland he revealed the Prussianism of the brass-hat 
brain. The Antiwaste candidates brought in by 
triumphant majorities as a protest against the insane 
and callous betrayal of national security by the Coali« 

373 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

tion were, for the most part, not young men of ardent 
ideals, but bald-headed, pot-bellied old reactionaries, 
scared by the thought of being more heavily taxed, 
and eager to beat down the workingman in his stand- 
ard of life to the degradation of tame and cheap 
labor by which their own profits would be increased. 
Winston Churchill, imperial gambler, the advocate of 
diastrous adventures, the most reckless spendthrift 
of public money in profitless campaigns, remained as 
a maker of trouble three years after war, and in the 
pages of Punch, which made a hero of him, his plump, 
smiling face, under absurd and clownish hats, failed 
to arouse the fury of youth by its self-complacent smirk. 
Lord Curzon, with his narrow, mid-Victorian mind, his 
impregnable conceit, still conducted the foreign policy 
of a people who had bled white because men like him- 
self had controlled their destiny. In France, in Italy, 
in Germany (though less in Germany) the old type 
of brain, heirs to the old traditions, rearranged the 
policy and structure of Europe and made a new and 
ghastly mess of it. Where was youth? What was it 
doing? 

II 

As I have described elsewhere in this book, youth 
was doing a lot of dancing, making up for lost time in 
the fun of life, not worrying much about the future, not 
worrying at all about the damned old past. That was 
all right. That was the privilege and nature of youth. 

But many of us expected that, in so far as youth was 
active, thoughtful, interested in the affairs of life out- 
side the desire for good fun, it would reveal itself on 
new lines and moving in a hopeful direction toward a 
new philosophy. We expected that those who had 
cursed the folly of the war so heartily would at least 
depart from that particular kind of folly, and that those 

374 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

who had looked forward to a new era of common sense, 
and of liberty, would stand for those ideals. 

Looking around the world, what did one see in the 
way of youth's adventure? In Ireland one saw, cer- 
tainly, an intense, ardent, fanatical demand for national 
liberty, not without a spiritual virtue, because the youth 
of Ireland was willing to die for its faith, and did die, 
on the scaffold and in the streets, with heroic courage for 
Ireland's sake, as they truly thought. But they adopted 
old, bloody, and evil methods, as old as sin. If this Irish 
youth had put up some form of passive resistance to a 
governance they hated, if they had relied only on spirit- 
ual force, or Christian sacrifice, according to their 
faith, they would, I am certain, have captured the 
allegiance of all lovers of liberty in England as in all 
countries, and would have gained their hearts' desire 
more rapidly, more certainly, and more completely. 
No power on earth, and least of all England, whose 
people are instinctively on the side of liberty, could have 
resisted their spirit, if revealed in that way. But Irish 
youth did not leap forward to a new idea or a new way. 
They went back to "cave-man stuff." Their methods 
of warfare were as far back as those of ancient Britons 
or of paleolithic men, though they had modern weapons 
for their killing. They laid traps for their enemy — 
our soldiers — and shot them to pieces. They were as 
cruel as dogs of hell, some of those Irish lads who shot 
men before the eyes of their women, and shot women 
who were friendly to our men. Their burnings of 
signal boxes, warehouses, docks, in England as well as 
Ireland, their execution in cold blood of men whom they 
labeled, rightly or wrongly, as "spies," were not worse, 
perhaps, than what has been done by other people 
fighting for national liberty, but were not any advance 
in spiritual methods or in the code of war, since the time 
of the anthropoid ape fighting for the liberty of his rock 

• 375 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

dwelling, or of Russian Bolsheviki fighting for the 
liberty of Soviet governance. The spiritual faith of 
the Irish people, wonderful through many centuries, 
was spoiled by the savagery of those young gunmen. 

On the other side were the Black-and-Tans. Was 
that service good enough for English and Scottish youth 
which had fought for the liberty of the world in France 
and many other fields? Was a guinea a day a decent 
excuse to suppress the claim of a little nation for self- 
government? Was their job of counter-terror, repri- 
sals, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a creamery 
for a barracks, a private house of a maiden lady for 
the bombing of a patrol, a step forward by youth to 
the new hope of the world, after a war to end war, a 
war to stamp out militarism? 

In Italy youth was active. WTien I happened to be 
there the youth of the masses had organized itself into 
bands of communists, sacking factories and shops, 
terrorizing respectable citizens, raising the red flag with 
a call to revolution. Then the youth of the classes 
organized a counter-terror, under the name of Fascisti, 
and those White Guards beat unarmed men to death, 
smashed up the furniture in restaurants, let loose revol- 
vers in a casual way, fell in gangs upon political oppo- 
nents, and surrounded the polling booths with murder 
in their hearts and in their hands, for those who might 
dare to vote against them. Nothing new in all that! 
Only a hark-back to the days of Dante, of Bianchi and 
Negri, Montague and Capulets, when out of dark 
courtyards in Florence, Padua, and Verona young 
noblemen and their retainers clashed with their rival 
houses, and spitted each other on their swords, and 
stabbed each other through the throat, and did not settle 
any argument. Must, then, the vitality and courage of 
youth still find their outlet in these old-fashioned ways ? 
Is youth not moving forward, but rather going back to 

376 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

liberated passion, the code of the Elizabethan swash- 
buckler, the young bravado with a quick turn of the 
wrist, the days when every man was a law to himself 
and very free in his judgment? 

Less than three years had passed since France listened 
with a strange wonder, as in the presence of a blessed 
miracle, to the silence that followed the long laboring 
of guns. The hospitals were still filled with the wreckage 
of young men maimed horribly, blinded, shell-shocked. 
Across France was the belt of horror . . . when Aristide 
Briand called up the 1919 class to march, if need be, into 
the Ruhr, to enforce the payment of indemnities. They 
were lads of twenty-two. All of them had been witnesses 
of the misery of war, which had robbed them of fathers, 
elder brothers, so many comrades. But I am told by 
Frenchmen that many of those lads looked forward to 
"trouble" with the Germans hopefully. They wanted 
a taste of war, a little street fighting, work with machine 
guns and bayonets. 

An American friend of mine went for a tour through 
the Belgian battlefields not long after the silence of the 
guns. Those fields had not yet been cleaned up. The 
unburied dead still lay there amidst the chaos of broken 
weapons, unexploded shells, gun wheels, the rags and 
tatters of uniforms, sand bags, the litter of the life and 
death that had passed. A young Belgian officer was 
his guide. Some mention was made of Holland, and 
instantly the Belgian officer "went up into the air" 
(as the American said), and in a blaze of passion declared 
that Belgium ought to knock hell out of Holland. He 
wanted more war. The ruin in which he stood had not 
satisfied him. 

Over in the United States there was no ruin. In the 

university of Yale there was a crowd of youth whose 

knowledge of war was limited to newspaper reports and 

the talk of older men who had been to France and back 

25 377 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

again, and the sight of long banners in American halls 
spangled with golden stars for those who died in action. 
I had luncheon with some of the undergraduates — a 
fresh and cheery "bunch" of men. One of them, rather 
older than the others, had been in the marines and had 
served in France. He had a fine gravity, and spoke 
thoughtfully as I walked with him alone after the 
luncheon party. 

"What do those fellows think of the war?" I asked 
him. 

He glanced at me sideways. 

"Which one? The last, or the next?" 

When I cried out against that "next," he told me 
that most of the Yale men who had been too young to 
get into the war were just kicking themselves for losing 
that experience. They were jealous of their elder 
brothers. They, too, wanted to be captains of air-craft, 
machine gunners, infantry officers. They wanted the 
great adventure of it all. "Of course they don't under- 
stand," he said. 

I told him that what he was telling me was the worst 
thing I had heard in the United States, and he grinned 
when he said, "That's so!" 

So before the old trenches have silted in and the ruin 
has been cleared away, the youth of the world is looking 
forward to "the great adventure" again! Their vitality, 
their pluck, the desire of youth to get out of the humdrum 
boredom of everyday life lure them on to the drama of 
war, in spite of the recent experience of war's enormous 
tragedy, the aftermath of its ruin, the bloodcurdling 
tales of men who came back from the hunting fields of 
death. If that were true of youth everywhere, then it 
is futile to hand on to them the experience of agony, 
or the lessons of that last war's folly, or the certainty 
that civilization itself will suffer shipwreck if another 
happens on the grand scale. If I thought youth were 

378 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

incorrigible in that way, I for one should abandon hope 
of any step forward by the human race. 

I have not abandoned hope yet, though I confess 
that, so far, youth is disappointing, slow to seize its 
chance, reactionary in its present mood, if judged only 
by surface appearances. What is happening below the 
surface, in the subconscious minds of young men who 
are thinking out, not consciously or deliberately, but 
in a groping, secretive way, the line of action ahead of 
them? It is hard to find that out. I try to get a lead 
from Oxford, where the new men are being formed, 
perhaps, for the next phase of English history, unless, as 
may be more probable, they come from less privileged 
places. But the undergraduates at Oxford do not give 
me more encouragement than those at Yale. 

"What do you talk about?" I ask some of them, 
and their answer is, "Just the usual things — college 
sports, personalities, dances, motor cars, the Australian 
cricketers, all that sort of tosh." 

"Politics?" 

Not much of that. They glance at the headlines of 
the Daily Mail. They don't bother to wade through 
Parliamentary reports, unless they have to mug them 
up for an insincere debate in which they speak to a brief. 
Of course there is a political crowd. There are clubs in 
which the political and economical problems of the world 
are discussed with a certain amount of intensity, but 
without any real conviction or any new school of thought. 
The old traditions prevail, — the belief that a political 
career depends upon party patronage, and is the same 
old game of "ins" and "outs." Men discuss whether 
it will be better to link up with the Coalition or the 
Independent Liberals, or even with labor, for the sake of 
a career, office, and rewards. There is no sign, except 
among a few wild birds, of soaring clear away from the 
old party groups to a new political philosophy. There is 

379 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

no Oxford Movement, it seems, which will change the 
current of English life. The men fall naturally into the 
old divisions of class prejudice and tradition. The 
Ruskin College men are still fair game because they dress 
badly, drop their h's, utter crude nonsense round the 
Martyrs' Memorial, and ask for trouble, and get it. At 
the beginning of the coal conflict, when Lloyd George 
revived his "Defense Force" to put down any civil 
disorder that might arise among millions of unemployed 
men, Oxford undergraduates volunteered with their 
motor bikes, and were ready for service on the side of 
their own class, without heartburnings as to the rights 
of laboring men to resist "wage cuts" which were 
afterward acknowledged to be too severe even by the 
owners who had issued them. No message came from 
young Oxford on behalf of Irish peace or in favor of a 
wiser policy of international peace — or in protest against 
a government leading the nation to the edge of economic 
ruin. Oxford remained a sanctuary aloof from the stress 
and strain of social England, cut off from the running 
tide of popular thought, and exclusively interested in 
the work and pleasure of university life. That, at least, 
was the report given to me by some of the undergrad- 
uates, surprised themselves that the immense convul- 
sion of war in which they had been caught up should 
leave the spirit of Oxford so untouched and unchanged, 
as far as they could see. Perhaps they did not see very 
far. It seems to me certain that those undergraduates 
have a different outlook on life from their predecessors 
of 191 3, and that, unknown to themselves, they belong 
to a different epoch, utterly divorced in its instincts 
and impulses from that prewar time. Their background 
is not the same. It is the background of Armageddon. 
Their horizon of vision is not the same. They look out 
upon a changing world. In ten years from now pre- 
war England will seem as remote and archaic as the 

380 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

eighteenth century. It seems to me likely that the 
first-year and the second-year men at Oxford now will 
see the last phase of that University history when caste 
and wealth maintained their pleasant privilege almost 
unchallenged. Democracy, with its rough accent, will 
break in. 

in 

A change, visible, unmistakable, aggressive, has over- 
taken the youth of democracy itself. The boys of the 
laboring classes in England, and of what we still call, with 
our fine distinction of caste, "the lower middle class," 
have developed into a new type, and are reaching out to 
new ideas which, beyond any doubt at all, will either de- 
stroy England or transform it. These lads of eighteen, 
nineteen, or so were more intimately touched by the war 
than those of their same age in higher ranks of English 
life. They were far more closely involved in the terrific 
churning up of English mass psychology, and habits of 
life and labor. Born and bred in the back streets of 
London and great cities, their first memories of childhood 
go back to prewar days when their parents lived un- 
easily, hardly, on the edge of dire poverty. Life then 
was a humdrum routine of work on small wages with a 
little margin at the best for small pleasures. It seemed 
unchanging and unchangeable, as inevitable as the laws 
of nature. It was rather squalid, dreary, and uninspir- 
ing. There was not much adventure in it, except for 
rare and daring souls, such as Lipton, Lever, and some 
others, who broke away and climbed high beyond the 
luck of those in the ruck of ill-paid toil. Then the war 
came, knocking at those small doors in mean streets. 
The first knocks were a summons to the older brothers 
or the younger fathers — "Your King and country need 
you!" Well, that was rather wonderful! They had 
never been needed before so urgently and importantly 

381 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

by King and country. They answered the summons, 
exalted out of the old ruck, proud and glad, eager for 
an adventure which made life less squalid, and gave it 
a nobler meaning. The little houses in the back streets 
poured forth the youngish men, who went away to 
strange places, leaving their women folk, and the small 
boys and the hobbledehoy lads too young to serve. 
Then came other knocks at the doors. It was death 
that came knocking. The youngish father or the elder 
brother had fallen on the field of honor or was 
"wounded, reported missing." As the years passed, 
single knocks became double knocks at the hearts of 
women as well as at the doors of houses. First one 
lad, then another — in some houses three or four — now 
gone forever. The little houses in the mean streets of 
London and great cities, and cottages in country villages, 
provided the great majority of casualties — these long 
daily lists of deaths, in "other ranks." Small boys, 
growing big, saw their mothers weeping, heard of fathers' 
deaths, and wondered and thought about the meaning 
of it all. But other things were happening in their 
little homes. Things not so miserable, rather wonder- 
ful. Boys too young to serve as soldiers were old 
enough to work in munition factories and get good 
wages. Girls' hands were wanted as well as male hands. 
Wages kept rising. Money was plentiful. Never had 
these little households seen so much good money flowing 
in week by week. 

Separation allowances made a good beginning. Pen- 
sions for badly wounded men helped to comfort their 
women. With two or three girls in the family, a growing 
boy or two, an older lad exempted because of his trade, 
or the father too old to be taken, the week's wages in 
war time amounted to a little fortune. Easy come, 
easy go. No stinting of food for working families. 
Good clothes and good boots. The "pictures" twice a 

382 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

week, a gramophone in the parlor. After all, for lucky 
households where death did not come knocking at the 
door the war was not so bad. It was not at all bad for 
boys of fifteen and sixteen and seventeen, who jingled 
money in their pockets like young lords, stood treat to 
the girls whenever they liked, felt gloriously independent. 
They remembered the early days before the war, when 
there had been stinting and scraping, how miserable 
and squalid they were! Well, they would never go back 
to that. Labor had come into its own. 

So it seemed, until the war ended and long after the 
war ended, until gradually unemployment grew apace, 
and the men who came back could not get jobs, or would 
not work, or struck for wages which presently could 
not be granted because victory had cost a lot of money 
and trade disappeared. 

The lads of nineteen, twenty, twenty-one have been 
through the gamut of that experience, have seen the 
pendulum swing visibly this way and that, and have 
listened to exciting conversations in small parlors and 
back kitchens, where these rapid changes now happened 
to the lives of working families. They have heard the 
tales of returned soldiers, their fathers and brothers 
who escaped, and listened to their curses against war, 
and their blasphemous comments on peace without re- 
ward. The shrill talk of working mothers, inveighing 
against injustice, has been in their ears. And they 
have done a deal of thinking and talking at street 
corners. 

Some of them have been reading a bit, and learning 
to debate in local clubs, and getting hold of books and 
facts to help them in debate. The youth of democracy 
is not indifferent to the affairs of life. Not indifferent, 
but ignorant of any larger truth than they find in venom- 
ous little pamphlets or lying little paragraphs of revo- 
lutionary rags inciting them to a holy war against the 

383 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

"idle rich." Their knowledge of economics is limited 
to the rate of wages compared with the cost of life, 
and they have no notion of the interdependence of 
nations, or of the effect of dear labor and limited output 
upon a country like their own which gained its commer- 
cial prosperity by cheap labor and large output. They 
are taught, and they believe, that "capital" has such 
inexhaustible resources of wealth that if its unjust 
profits are distributed among those who do the hardest 
toil there could be large wages and short hours for all 
of them. Not yet has it been brought home to them that 
after a war which destroyed the savings of centuries and 
mortgaged the industry of future generations the only 
escape from ruin is by way of longer hours, less pay, 
and increased efficiency. The youth of democracy, 
inspired by a one-eyed propaganda, fed on half truths 
and false science, see the progress of life only in terms 
of class conflict, view it all as a union of classes moving 
toward a common goal. Capital is the "enemy" of 
labor. The idea that it might be the ally of labor 
does not enter into their imagination. 

After all, those boys of the back streets see the facts 
of life shrewdly, as far as they can be visualized in their 
own experience, and cannot be expected to have a wider 
vision, without any kind of guidance. They see the little 
cheats and corruptions and robberies of the retail trades- 
man whom they serve as shopboys and counterjumpers. 
They see the ruthless grind of small employers of labor 
who became war profiteers by exploiting the needs of 
the people with unashamed dishonesty. They saw 
those profiteers in the making, were witnesses of their 
tricks and dodges, watched their progress to prosperity 
while young men died in dirty ditches for ideals loudly 
proclaimed by these old bandits who wanted the war to 
go on forever and were callous of its massacres. No 
wonder the boys of the back streets are cynical and 

384 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

selfish in their own aims. The capitalists and the govern- 
ment do not act in a way to disarm their hostility. With 
but a thin camouflage of justice, capital and its po- 
litical defenders play their own game, protect their own 
interests, and "dig in" for a trench warfare against the 
claims of democracy for a greater share of reward, a 
greater knowledge of secret diplomacy, a closer co-opera- 
tion in the management of the business in which they 
happen to be working. During the war labor was petted 
and pampered, promised an immense harvest of the 
fruits of victory, a land fit for heroes to live in, and 
security of life and limb. Those promises were flung 
away with cynical contempt when the war ended. The 
governments of Europe arranged a peace which was to 
be a preparation for new wars. They ignored the 
economics of life for political adventures paid for out of 
the poverty of exhausted peoples. Reckless of the finan- 
cial ruin of their countries after the exhaustion of war, 
they increased the burdens of taxation by a wild levity 
of extravagance, as though stricken mad by victory, 
until, brought abruptly to a check by panic, they tried 
to save themselves by a sudden onslaught upon working- 
men's wages. There was no attempt, in England, any- 
how, to arrange a gradual reduction of wages according 
to a gradual descent in costs of living, no kind of attempt 
to organize a new fellowship between capital and labor, 
by means of which the interests of both would be served, 
greater efficiency might be secured, and the prosperity 
of the nation saved from the menace of complete de- 
struction. Just as labor declared war on capital, so 
capital declared war on labor (after licking its boots in 
time of need), and neither side had any vision beyond 
the narrow conflict. Youth failed to come forward with 
a new call to its battalions. Youth played into the hands 
of corrupt old politicians, or else did not bother. At the 
time of writing this book, youth is still lagging behind, 

385 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

afraid to take its place, or not wanting its place. Yet 
the chance of youth is the hope of the world. 



IV 

What is that chance? . . . That is hard to define. It 
would be great audacity to outline a program for the 
youth of the world, and any such attempt would be, 
rightly, ridiculed by the younger generation. They 
will not be bound by hard and fast rules laid down for 
their guidance by the old men whom they despise. 
They are not to be tied to labels or enrolled into new 
parties of high-sounding names. They will not make 
an act of faith in any ready-made creed of political 
philosophy, or be governed by laws laid down by 
ancient precedent. The youth of the coming world 
will, like its predecessors, indulge in a free play of 
ideas and individual liberty of opinion, ranging itself 
instinctively, by hereditary influences, or conditions of 
character, temper, prejudice, and passion, with con- 
flicting groups. There will be the eternal fight between 
those who see differing aspects of truth and think their 
view is the full and perfect vision, between the activists 
and the passivists, the vitalists and the mechanists, the 
egotists and the altruists. The House of Youth will 
have its Guelphs and its Ghibellines, its Negri and 
Bianchi, as throughout the history of the world. And 
that is good, for it would be a bad world if the ardor 
of youth, its gay sense of adventure, its valors, should 
be marshaled into one disciplined force, obeying some 
single idea imposed by the tyranny of a theoretical 
monster, or by some new fanaticism. Yet with perfect 
liberty and a myriad differences of ideas and methods, 
there may surely be a new jumping-ofF ground for the 
race of youth to new goals. There may be general 
consent about certain undoubted facts of life, as there 

386 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

is about the sun shining in the heavens, in spite of 
Relativity, and about the need of food to human life, 
though doctors may differ about the number of calories 
required for human sustenance. 

The new jumping-off ground might well be a line 
cutting across history on November n, 1918, and 
dividing the Old World from the New, as Before the War 
and After the War. Youth might at least say: "What 
happened Before the War was all wrong. It is for us to 
see that its immense stupidity of wrongness shall not 
happen again." From that starting point they could 
go ahead, casting away all the old baggage of racial and 
historical hatreds, diplomatic intrigues and sacrifices, 
military traditions and superstitions. If youth cannot 
yet formulate a positive faith, they can at least assert a 
negative faith annihilating the folly of the past. 

"I do not believe in war as a reasonable way of 
argument. 

"I do not believe that preparation for war is a pre- 
ventive of war. 

"I do not believe that armed conflict is necessary to 
the spiritual vigor of mankind. 

"I do not believe that the victory of one nation over 
another increases the wealth of the victor nation. 

"I do not believe that national egotism is the supreme 
virtue of the individual and the state. 

"I do not believe that there must be an eternal con- 
flict between those who do the rough work of the world 
and those who organize the produce of their labor. 

"I do not believe that civilization reached its highest 
phase in 1914. 

"I do not believe that cruelty is an essential element 
of human nature, that selfishness is the highest and 
strongest motive of individuals and nations, and that 
the pursuit of spiritual truth and beauty are mere 
illusions of disordered minds. 

387 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

"I do not believe that the political and economic 
system of Europe as laid down in the Treaty of Ver- 
sailles was divinely inspired by Heaven-sent messengers 
named Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau, and 
therefore unalterable by human effort without grievous 
sin. 

"I do not believe that men and women are incapable 
of simple reasoning, and of actions which may preserve 
them from otherwise certain famine, disease, slaughter, 
and extermination." 

It is not too much to ask youth to accept these nega- 
tions, after a little argument and a call for evidence. 
Indeed, my own belief is that the younger generation 
is satisfied with the evidence, and has already cleared 
all that useless lumber out of its mind. As far as I know 
some of these younger men, they do not believe that war 
is a reasonable way of argument. They see no sense in 
it at all, though they may see a nonsensical adventure 
which provides an escape from boredom, or an unpleasant 
way of life. I fancy they would grant without further 
debate (except for the amusement of debate) the other 
negatives I have set out, and if they would only get 
positive about a new system of life and thought starting 
cleanly from the sponging out of old traditions, the 
world would move apace beyond its present state of 
misery. "Perhaps to new and unknown miseries!" 
cries the pessimist. Alas, yes! But I think of the 
latest definition I heard of a pessimist — a man who 
wears two pairs of braces and a belt. One can't move a 
step without a risk. 

It is even possible to set up the goal posts for the new 
race of youth, and hope that they will start in that 
direction without a backward glance, and with good 
wind and heart. The world knows its own quagmires, 
its own danger spots, the place of the precipice over 
which we all must plunge if we go much farther in that 

388 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

direction. Battlefields are not the only danger spots — 
and perhaps I am inclined to harp too much on the peril 
of a new war, not saying so much about the peril of 
world famine, of disease, of moral and spiritual de- 
cadence. But it is certain to all thinking minds that a 
new war on the scale of the last (and a new war would 
be worse than the last) would lead to all those other 
plagues, and end all our hopes. The danger of it is so 
great and evident that at least any new goal set up by 
youth must first of all avoid that old pitfall. Why not? 
What is the difficulty ? I see none, if youth will say with 
conviction, "I do not believe in war as a reasonable way 
of argument"; still less, if there may be less than none 
(which is possible), if youth will say with positive and 
triumphant assertion, "I do believe in peace!" 

Given that assertion, there is a program ready for 
youth, not too formal or cut and dried, but nobly out- 
lined, as a fine clear vision across a fair field unexplored 
by pioneers. 



There is one man in Europe to-day — not belonging to 
the battalion of youth, yet never one of the old men, 
though he stood among them, aghast at their stupidity, 
indignant with their wickedness — who has marked out 
the goal for the younger generation of the English- 
speaking world, in the field of foreign policy. That is 
General Smuts, who looks forward with courage, and 
not in a cowardly way, backward. I think his speech 
before the imperial conference in June of 1921, reported 
in scraps and mostly ignored in the gutter press, gave 
a clear call to youth for their work in the building of a 
new world — to the youth of the English-speaking 
peoples in the great family of the British Empire. His 
first words were but a repetition of one word ringing like 

389 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

a bell in the ears of those who listened, and it rang again 
and again throughout his speech: 

"What the world most needs to-day," he said, "is 
peace, a return to a peaceful temper, and to the resump- 
tion of peaceful and normal industry. To my mind that 
is the test of all true policy to-day. Peace is wanted by 
the world. Peace is wanted especially by the peoples 
of the British Empire. We are a peaceful empire; our 
very nature is such that peace is necessary for us. We 
have no military aims to serve, we have no militarist 
ideals, and it is only in a peaceful world that our ideals 
can be realized. 

"It should therefore be the main — in fact the only — 
object of the British policy," said General Smuts, "to 
secure real peace for the empire and the world generally. 
The question of reparations, which was, perhaps, the 
most difficult and intricate with which we had to deal 
in Paris, has finally been eliminated, in a settlement 
which, I venture to hope, will prove final and workable. 
That is a very great advance. The other great advance 
that has been made — and it is an enormous advance — 
is the final disarmament of Germany. That the greatest 
military empire that ever existed in history should be 
reduced to a peace establishment of 100,000 men is 
something which I considered practically impossible. 
It is a great achievement, so' far reaching, indeed, that 
it ought to become the basis of a new departure in world 
policy." 

He pointed out that "we cannot stop with Germany, 
we cannot stop with the disarmament of Germany. It 
is impossible for us to continue to envisage the future 
of the world from the point of view of war. . . . Such a 
policy would be criminal, it would be the betrayal of the 
causes for which we fought during the war, and if we 
embarked on such a policy it would be our undoing. 
If we are to go forward into the future staggering under 

390 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

the load of military and naval armaments, while our 
competitors in central Europe are free from the incubus 
of great armies, we shall be severely handicapped and 
in the end we shall have the fruits of victory lost to us 
by our postwar policy. Already under the operation of 
inexorable economic factors we find that the position is 
developing to the advantage of central Europe. 

"Armaments depend upon policy, and therefore," 
said Smuts, "I press very strongly that our policy should 
be such as to make the race for armaments impossible. 
That should be the cardinal feature of our foreign 
policy. We should not go into the future under this 
awful handicap of having to support great armaments, 
build new fleets, raise new armies, while our economic 
competitors are free of that liability under the peace 
treaty. 

"The most fatal mistake of all in my humble opinion 
would be a race of armaments against America. America 
is the nation that is closest to us in all the human ties. 
The Dominions look upon her as the oldest of them. 
She is the relation with whom we most closely agree 
and with whom we can most cordially work together. 
She left our circle a long time ago because of a great 
historic mistake. I am not sure that a wise policy after 
the great events through which we have recently passed 
might not repair the effects of that great historic error 
and once more bring America on to lines of general 
co-operation with the British Empire. 

"To my mind it seems clear that the only path of 
safety for the British Empire is a path on which she can 
walk together with America. In saying this I do not 
wish to be understood as advocating an American 
alliance. Nothing of the kind. I do not advocate an 
alliance or any exclusive arrangement with America. 
It would be undesirable, it would be impossible and un- 
necessary. The British Empire is not in need of exclu- 

39i 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

sive allies. It emerged from the war quite the greatest 
power in the world, and it is only unwisdom or unsound 
policy that could rob her of that great position. She 
does not want exclusive alliances. What she wants to 
see established is more universal friendship in the 
world. The nations of the British Empire work to 
make all the nations of the world more friendly to one 
another. We wish to remove grounds for misunder- 
standings and causes of friction, and to bring together 
all the free peoples of the world in a system of friendly 
conferences and consultations in regard to their difficul- 
ties. We wish to see a real society of nations, away 
from the old ideas and practices of national domination 
or imperial domination, which were the real root causes 
of the Great War. Although America is not a member 
of the League of Nations, there is no doubt that co- 
operation between her and the British Empire would be 
the easy and natural thing, and there is no doubt it 
would be the wise thing. 

"In shaping our course for the future, we must bear 
in mind that the whole world position has radically 
altered as a result of the war. The old viewpoint from 
which we considered Europe has completely altered. 
She suffers from an exhaustion which is the most ap- 
palling fact of history; and the victorious countries of 
Europe are not much better off than the vanquished. 
No, the scene has shifted on the great stage. To my 
mind that is the most important fact in the world to- 
day, and the fact to which our foreign policy should 
have special regard. Our temptation is still to look upon 
the European stage as of the first importance. It is no 
longer so; and I suggest that we should not be too 
deeply preoccupied with it. . . . Therefore, not from 
feelings of selfishness, but in a spirit of wisdom, one 
would counsel prudence and reserve in our continental 
commitments; that we do not let ourselves in for 

392 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

European entanglements more than is necessary, and 
that we be impartial, friendly, and helpful to all alike, 
and avoid any partisan attitude in the concerns of the 
Continent of Europe. 

"Undoubtedly the scene has shifted away from Eu- 
rope to the Far East and to the Pacific. The problems 
of the Pacific are to my mind the world problems of 
the next fifty years or more. In these problems we are, 
as an empire, very vitally interested. Three of the Do- 
minions border on the Pacific; India is next door; there, 
too, are the United States and Japan. There also is 
China; the fate of the greatest human population on 
earth will have to be decided. There Europe, Asia, and 
America are meeting, and there, I believe, the next 
great chapter in human history will be enacted. I ask 
myself what will be the character of that history. 

"Shall we act in continuous friendly consultation in 
the true spirit of a society of nations, or will there once 
more be a repetition of rival groups, of exclusive alli- 
ances, and finally of a terrible catastrophe more fatal 
than the one we have passed through? That, to my 
mind, is the alternative. That is the parting of the 
ways at which we have arrived now." 

With a plea that the British Empire should act as 
mediator between the East and West, General Smuts 
turned to the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, with the 
reminder of something that that man had helped to 
create and afterward had tried to kill, by contempt and 
neglect. It was the reminder that the world had at hand 
an instrument of comparison, consultation, and inter- 
national justice which might be used to lift the world 
out of its morass. That instrument was the League of 
Nations, which even yet could be made good in fulfill- 
ment of the hopes for which it had been shaped. 

There is a policy which youth might adopt, within the 
English-speaking world. It is a free policy, not fixed to 
26 393 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

narrow lines, not tied up to tradition, not defined as an 
austere dogma, but points the goal that may be reached 
by many ways and methods if the spirit of the army 
leaders is directed toward the ideal of world peace, not 
only with white races, but with black, and brown, and 
yellow races. 

VI 

Youth should find this a great adventure. Its soul 
will not be cramped for lack of opportunity, and looking 
near at hand in that Europe from which, as General 
Smuts thinks, the balance of power is shifting, there is 
other work to do, not without ability and adventurous 
intelligence. The nations of Europe have still to re- 
shape their internal life, to revitalize their own energies, 
to start afresh in a new era of hope and social effort. 
We are tired, now, in Europe. Our countries are filled 
with people who became old in the four years of war, 
and stayed weary with continuing lassitude. We are 
unable to rouse ourselves to new efforts, to begin the 
world again. But in a little while we old, tired people 
will go to rest, and youth, with its freshness, not de- 
jected by that aging experience, that inward weariness 
of soul caused by the tension of a long-drawn agony, 
will be ready for new beginnings. They will do well if 
they make a clean sweep of old watchwords and old 
labels. They will start well if they sweep away at once 
the labels of the old quack remedies of political cheap- 
jacks — Tory, Liberal, Communist, Socialist, Bolshevist. 
If they must have labels and quack remedies, let them 
be new and freshly mixed, for the others have grown 
musty and soured. I think the spirit of youth should 
get to work first to reconstruct national life by a new 
philosophy of social duty. That sounds rather hard and 
dogmatic, but it seems to me that no reconstruction 

394 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

may be well done unless it is based upon certain laws of 
which we can have new knowledge. 

It is certain, for instance, and very clear to all minds 
after three years of muddled peace, that there can be no 
recovery of Europe so long as nations do not recognize 
their economic interplay, or so long as there is this 
wild confusion of interests, this madness of hostility 
between sections of society, within the nations them- 
selves. Experiments have been made of many old ideas 
which seemed to hold some virtue in them until their 
failure and falsity were proved to all the world. 

Communism had its chance in Russia, and its destruc- 
tion of capital and private property and individual 
liberty, and all the delicate machinery of modern life, 
in a desperate effort for absolute equality, has given to 
the world a ghastly exhibition of famine, typhus, and 
tyranny. It has proved itself wrong in psychology as 
well as in economic science. Lenin was defeated by 
the instincts of human nature more than by the break- 
down of transport and supplies. 

There have been other experiments which now belong 
to the long catalogue of human folly. The German ex- 
periment of a world dominance by military power came 
to a very ruinous result, and this, too, was defeated, not 
so much by counter-forces of the same kind as by cer- 
tain spiritual powers working in the minds of humble 
men and rallying them to passionate resistance. There 
has been the general breakdown of a materialistic 
philosophy which had Europe, and the whole world, 
indeed, within its grips. The very objects which the 
human family was striving to attain have been proved 
false. 

Happiness is, after all, the main purpose of human 
life, but there was no great sum of human happiness 
visible in the world before the war, even among those 
people who seemed to have gained all that others were 

395 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

striving and failing to gain. Material comfort, the 
relaxations of life, the power of wealth, the pleasures of 
the world, seemed to promise satisfaction to their pos- 
sessors and to be the unattainable good to people in the 
squalor and peril of poverty. All civilized society was 
engaged in a desperate struggle to reach or hold those 
material values, and it was a cutthroat conflict between 
possessors and dispossessed. Yet the successful man did 
not seem to bask in his success. He seemed balked by 
some psychological bunker. He had no restfulness of 
soul, but strove always for more wealth and more power. 
The pleasures of life did not seem wonderfully pleasing 
to those who wallowed in them. Indeed, one cynic said 
that life would be endurable but for its pleasures. Eng- 
lish society before the war had secured all there was in 
the way of material happiness, yet to an outside observer 
like myself there was not much evidence that those 
people were really happy, or even honestly amused. 
They were weary with the pleasures of the London sea- 
son, they were bored at Ascot and bored again at Cowes. 
In their country houses they quarreled with their wives 
more savagely than less lucky men in country cottages. 
They had a sense of emptiness which they tried to fill 
by artificial means, like gambling or playing dangerous 
games with other men's women or with other women's 
men. If, then, the possession of all that society desires 
in material prosperity brings no satisfaction, it seems 
clearly demonstrated that society is pursuing an illu- 
sion in the search for happiness. The very goal of their 
desire is a mirage leading them on through desperate 
ways to a waterless desert. There must be some other 
conception of human happiness. Mere materialism is not 
good enough. Manchester, Wigan, Pittsburgh, and 
Chicago, Essen and Elberfeld, even London, Paris, New 
York, and Berlin, do not demonstrate in their richer 
quarters a high standard of human happiness, though 

396 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

in their poorer quarters and in other parts or their 
civilized jungles there is a frightful conflict for some 
share of it. 

Here is a problem for the coming youth to solve, and 
surely the solution is that material and spiritual progress 
must be intertwined, that poverty of spirit is as bad as 
poverty in material things, or worse, and that the ideal 
of human happiness is not to be found in mere posses- 
sion, but perhaps in the honor of service, in work which 
has a spiritual purpose as well as material reward, in 
security rather than in wealth, in energy rather than in 
idleness, in welfare of mind as well as of body, and in the 
pursuit of an ideal not wholly selfish. 

It is perhaps possible that youth may reconstruct 
society on a more spiritual basis which would tend to 
abolish the jungle conflict between classes and in- 
dividuals by the modification of human greed, and by a 
union of interests instead of open warfare, within the 
nation. In home affairs as well as in international 
politics, warfare has been proved a senseless form of 
argument, and very wasteful. 

Force has failed definitely, for just as in wars between 
modern nations victory hurts as much as defeat, because 
energy given to destruction has no productive value, so 
in industrial warfare successful strikes or successful 
strike breaking means unsuccessful trade to both sides. 
All these sectional conflicts lessen the wealth of a people, 
whichever way they go, and at a time now, when, after 
the exhaustion of war, there is no energy at all for 
waste. 

It is clear that if labor in England demands and gains 
wages at war rates, or double war rates, such victory 
will be without value to them in our present conditions 
of trade. For with exports down by 50 per cent, and cost 
of production higher than the means of home or foreign 
markets, and taxation reducing the purchasing power of 

397 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

all consumers, these high wages will not balance with 
high prices, nor create prosperity by which they may 
be justified. They will result only in the increase of 
poverty and unemployment, and the wages themselves 
will have no more than a fictitious value, as in Germany, 
where the workingman is now paid sixty marks a day 
instead of five marks as in prewar days. The German 
workman has therefore multiplied his wages by twelve 
times, but he is not so simple as to think that he has 
gained a stupendous victory in material progress. On 
the contrary, he knows that his sixty marks are worth 
less to him in real value than the five marks of a happier 
time. 

On the other hand, employers of labor in Great Britain 
will gain no victory by smashing the trade unions and 
beating labor to its knees. That process will be costly, 
dangerous, and disastrous. They will lose more by such 
a conflict than by an orderly, just, and reasonable ar- 
rangement based upon the consent of free and spirited 
men. They lost millions of pounds more in the great 
coal conflict of this year, 1921, by a ruthless ultimatum 
cutting the wages of the miners by nearly 50 per cent 
than if they had made an easy sliding scale spread over 
a long period and adjusted to falling prices. The govern- 
ment, supporting their policy of ruthlessness, expended 
vast sums of public money in raising a Defense Force to 
protect the nation in case of riots (which did not happen) 
and to pay the pensions of two million men outside the 
mining districts unemployed because factories were shut 
down for lack of fuel. It is impossible to estimate the 
loss to Great Britain due to that insane method of con- 
ducting national industry, for apart from the direct 
costs and losses amounting to at least two million pounds 
a day during the whole period of the struggle, covering 
the third part of a working year, the indirect loss of 
trade which will not be recovered for many years, if 

398 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

ever at all, is incalculable. One expert reckons it as 
two hundred and forty million pounds. 

Yet that injury to the nation was caused not by 
inevitable forces coming into conflict, nor by any prin- 
ciple of justice against injustice, which must be fought 
out lest the soul should perish, but by sheer stupidity 
on both sides. The owners with their funny little bureau- 
cratic brains, their greedy insincerities, their pose of 
being "strong men," whereas they are weak men of 
feeble vision and petulant character, flung a wage 
schedule at the colliers' heads with a "Take it or leave 
it," knowing, as they afterward admitted, that the 
proposed wages were below the minimum standard of 
life compared with the existing costs of life's necessities. 
On the other side, colliers failed to understand the 
realities of national and international arithmetic and 
believed that the government should continue to sub- 
sidize unprofitable mines. No man among them all, on 
both sides of the struggle, had any broader vision than 
that of hostility — cat-and-dog politics — nor saw what 
was clear to all outsiders, that by friendly understanding 
of facts and figures, a union of common interests for the 
good of the industry, an increased efficiency of organiza- 
tion and output, a rigid economy of management and 
cost, a combined effort for renewed prosperity by a tem- 
porary abatement of profits all round, and an intensifi- 
cation of energy, above all, perhaps, by the elimination 
of corrupt and greedy middlemen so that the price of 
coal at the pit-head should not be monstrously increased 
when it arrived at the coal cellar, the greater part of the 
trouble might be overcome to the benefit of everybody. 

That case is typical of all industrial "unrest" in Great 
Britain. All sections of society are thinking in terms 
of conflict and not in terms of combination. They are 
adopting the tactics of warfare instead of the policy of 
conciliation. The principles of the League of Nations, 

399 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

so enthusiastically applauded by "labor" as the hope 
of the world, for the sake of world peace and inter- 
national justice, are utterly ignored in home affairs. 



VII 

It is surely "up to youth," the intelligence of the 
coming generation, to abandon these absurdities of the 
old tradition, and to establish a new system by breaking 
down the old frontiers of hostility between classes as 
well as nations. The curse of English life, which is 
snobbishness — snobbishness of the masses as well as 
snobbishness of the classes — must go first of all, for there 
will be no hope so long as the workingman has a silly 
pride in his own exclusive caste which forbids him to 
associate on equal terms with a man working just as 
hard in a black coat instead of corduroys, and as long 
as the black-coated fellow resents comradeship with 
those who wear clothes of a different cut and spend their 
days without a collar. It must be recognized in the 
New World that manual labor is not less "genteel" 
than intellectual labor, provided the laborer plays the 
game, does his job well, and looks at life without a 
squint. It must also be acknowledged by the "prole- 
tariat" (one of those words to be condemned by the 
makers of the New Dictionary) that the brain worker, 
the artist, the writer of books, is also entitled to his 
wages, according to the value of his output, and is not 
necessarily a "parasite," gorging himself on the blood of 
the toiling masses, but, on the contrary, in many cases, 
a harder-working person, a more indefatigable and 
enthusiastic craftsman, than the bricklayer or the car- 
penter, and, now and then, a greater benefactor of 
human society. 

The snobbishness of labor, its self-conceit, its unrea- 

400 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

sonable hatred of the intellectuals, must be severely 
checked. 

Here, then, is another task for youth — a great icon- 
oclasm, a joyous destruction of all those Aunt Sallies 
smirking in Vanity Fair, and a smashing of all fetishes 
which belong to the tribal days when a nation was 
divided, as now, into hostile bands calling themselves 
Socialists, Individualists, Tories, Radicals, and other 
totem names, each convinced that it holds the true 
faith, and each ignoring the common interests of the 
nation for the narrow and sectional interests of its 
own denomination. 

I have granted that youth will always be divided in 
ideas, for without that there would be no liberty, but I 
have a theory that the way of division may in future be 
vertical rather than horizontal. Now it is clearly hori- 
zontal. Straight lines are drawn between classes so 
that they are like the strata of world-old rocks. But a 
vertical division would divide industries rather than 
classes, activities rather than possessions, methods rather 
than objects. It is hard to explain, unless one imagines 
a nursery full of children playing with a box of bricks. 
They have the same number of bricks, and each one de- 
sires to build a high house. Some build in one way, some 
in another, according to fancy. But they are all building 
up from the base and not overlaying one another's bricks. 
Their differences are expressed not horizontally, but ver- 
tically. So in the business of life and the structure of 
society it may be possible to build up from the common 
base of national resource, all efforts mounting higher, 
according to varying ideals, and not overlaying one 
another and crushing one another into the hard strata 
of castes, but working with the same impulse of attain- 
ment, though with different ideas, different methods, 
different results. 

Germany is attempting something of that sort in the 

401 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

industrial organization by great combinations of raw 
material, labor, and mechanical energy, building up 
from that base to every branch of manufacture. There 
are at least twenty such combinations in Germany to- 
day, embracing practically the whole of her industrial 
life. Their common impulse is to restore the economic 
health of their country and to attain industrial su- 
premacy in Europe. It is true that there is still the 
under dog and the top dog in that vertical system, and 
that German labor is badly paid, but within the great 
German trusts there is such a general desire for effi- 
ciency, and such a general spirit of service, that the 
wages of the men are not being considered as subject to 
the old ruthless laws of economics, but in relation to 
human factors of efficiency — the need of food, the need 
of leisure, the need of health, the need of mental satis- 
faction — and because labor is recognized as the basis 
of all energy and the source of all wealth, the position 
of labor in Germany to-day is powerful and admit- 
ted, and it is by consent and not by tyranny that 
its wages are arranged. In each factory, and in each 
bank, indeed, there is a council which represents the 
interests of the employees, puts forward claims for in- 
creased wages, better conditions of service, and so on, 
and in spite of the German spirit of discipline, and the 
industrial autocracy of men like Stinnes, these repre- 
sentatives are given a fair hearing and in most cases the 
claims are conceded if based on the interests of the 
business, the first principle of which is efficiency. Upon 
such lines as that, the lines of co-operation between the 
various branches of industrial activity, youth might 
organize a new system of service which would eliminate 
some at least of our present evils by greater equality of 
reward for good service (though not absolute equality 
which would destroy initiative) and by giving workers 

402 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

greater interest in their toil because a real partnership 
in the progress and profits of the industry. 



VIII 

Looking with unprejudiced vision at the problem of 
life, it is possible that the younger generation — that 
new spirit which I call Youth, though its leaders may 
not be beardless boys — will largely abandon industri- 
alism as we now know it, and reshape civilization on 
simpler and more natural foundations. It is indeed 
likely that we are seeing the last of the industrial era 
as it is composed of monstrous, overcrowded cities filled 
with people who live on the exchange of artificial com- 
modities and unnecessary luxuries, and sustained by 
the joyless labor of men and women in unhealthy fac- 
tories where their toil is machine-minding and their 
activity of mind and body limited to the damnable 
iteration of some small gesture. This will sound like 
heresy to the big manufacturers, but I believe that hu- 
manity is already in revolt against that kind of labor. 
They are breaking away from its deadening influence. 
Limitation of output, and the claim to short, and still 
shorter, hours, are but symptoms of a general detesta- 
tion of grinding, unimaginative, and inhuman toil. 

The war with all its horrors was not without one great 
joy. It liberated masses of men from their machine-like 
life, took them back to nature, gave them liberty of 
movement, change of scene, infinite variety. Millions 
of men who had that experience, feeling their humanity, 
decline to go back again to the dead mechanism of their 
previous work, or, if they go back for sheer need of bread, 
use the strike as a means of temporary liberation, and 
go slow in their effort of production. The economic 
change in Europe is likely to destroy big cities as well as 

403 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

big industries, or at least to diminish their size and 
importance. 

Both of them depend for their life largely upon the 
exchange and manufacture of luxuries. But the poverty 
that is creeping over Europe will not permit of luxuries 
to anything like the old extent. It is idle to manufac- 
ture expensive porcelain, grand pianos, silk robes, 
all the gauds and toys of rich life, if there is no margin 
of wealth left to buy them, and that is happening. It 
has happened in Russia, in Austria, in Poland. It is 
beginning to happen in Germany, in France, and in 
England. In those first three countries I have mentioned 
and in others that I have lately visited, like Italy, the 
reality of wealth is in the hands of one class. Richer than 
a Russian noble with millions of rubles (worthless as 
waste paper) is the Russian peasant with a plot of earth 
from which he receives a crop of grain or on which he 
feeds a flock of sheep. Luckier than the aristocracy of 
Vienna (watching their clothes wear out and their flesh 
wear thin) is the Austrian peasantry, getting enough to 
eat out of their soil and ready to sell their surplus — not 
for money, not for wads of paper — in exchange for 
boots, plows, tobacco, smocks, or other garments for 
their women. 

There is a growing hostility among the peasantry in 
many countries to the city-dwelling folk. They call 
them parasites, and names not so nice as that. Feeling 
in Austria was so bitter that, rather than sell their stuff" 
to Vienna, some of the peasants burned their surplus 
stores of food! The great industrial cities in England 
are not threatened with such hostility, for England, alas! 
has destroyed its peasantry. But they are threatened 
with starvation. They are already besieged by the 
menace of economic death. Their manufactures are 
not being bought much in the world's markets. Their 
export trade is dwindling down to nothing in com- 

404 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

parison with their needs of life, for these great popula- 
tions of English industrial cities depend for their food 
upon the exchange of imports for exports. There is not 
enough food produced in England to last for three 
months on fair rations. All supplies for the other nine 
months have to be bought and paid for in foreign coun- 
tries. They can only be paid for by excess of exports 
over imports. Therefore if the export trade of England 
does not recover mighty quick (and German reparations 
will not help recovery!) there will be an exodus of starv- 
ing folk from Manchester, Wigan, Sheffield, Cardiff, a 
hundred other cities. The factories will be deserted for 
the fields again. Life will be simpler, more primitive in 
its conditions and amusements (if there is to be any 
kind of fun!), and it will be the task of youth — the new 
leadership — to reconstruct national life on a ground 
plan of agricultural industry, as in the springtime of our 
history. Perhaps the individual will be happier again, 
and Merrie England will be filled with song and laughter 
which were silent when machinery whirred above its 
wheels. 

Civilization may not work out that way — it is im- 
possible to forecast the near future, still less the distant 
vision, but, whatever happens, youth has its chance of 
building anew, on cleaner, straighter lines, with ideals 
of beauty and human happiness, and spiritual service, 
broader than the boundaries of a caste or class, nobler 
than the interest of wealth or wages. 

Science must be the servant of youth, and not its 
master; machinery must not overpower men. In the 
last war human courage, physical excellence, the highest 
virtue of manhood, were at the mercy of big engines. 
At the tug of a string twenty miles away by some low- 
browed churl in charge of a gun, a knight sans peur et 
sans reproche was made into a mess of blood and pulp, 
without a chance of self-defense, without warning of his 

405 



/ 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

peril, as he lay asleep in a cottage or joked over his 
bowl of soup. 

Science used its secrets, not for human happiness, but 
for misery and destruction. The very victory of the air, 
won entirely by the valor of boys playing pranks with 
death high above the earth, was used for the increase of 
human slaughter and not for joy and liberation. Even 
now, after the war, with its bloody agony still fresh in 
the imagination of peoples, scientists, betraying their 
souls, are at work in laboratories, in the United States 
and in England, inventing devilish gases to enlarge the 
area of their spreading poison for "the next war," which 
is now in preparation by dark minds. There are experi- 
ments of pilotless airplanes, controlled from wireless 
stations, and equipped with clockwork bombs for the 
dropping of the poison vapors which will choke whole 
cities and blast all vegetation and any kind of life 
where it falls. 

Youth, if it has any new spiritual purpose, any valor 
for the rescue of humanity, will declare war upon scien- 
tists who work with such evil intent, will rescue science 
itself from its lunacy, and dedicate it anew to the service 
of human happiness. 

There is much to be done by youth, no lack of worlds 
to conquer. A crusade of health is a desperate need of 
our days, for disease is creeping apace over many peoples 
and countries, eating into the physique of the white 
races and ordaining a new massacre of innocents. Tu- 
berculosis, rickets, horrible plagues that have their 
origin in filth, and a general decadence of physical 
standards caused by ill nourishment, overcrowding, 
lack of exercise, stinking conditions of life, threaten vast 
populations. In England war-time conscription revealed 
an alarming degeneracy of physical quality. The third- 
line troops were a poor and weedy lot in many battalions, 
arousing the astonishment and contempt of Dominion 

406 



THE CHANCE OF YOUTH 

troops, who said, "Something's wrong with Mother Eng- 
land if these are her sons!" I shall never forget the ap- 
pearance of the bantam divisions on the British front 
in 1916. They were recruited from the undersized fel- 
lows of the industrial districts, and their average height 
was about five feet. Some of them were smart little 
fellows, with the spirit of Hop-o'-My-Thumb, keen and 
valiant, but many more were stunted in mind as well as 
in body, with button heads and weedy legs, hollow chests 
and match-stick arms. When they came into General 
Haldane's corps he went down their lines, pointing his 
stick at those obviously unfit for fighting ranks, and 
put back two-thirds of them for work behind the lines. 
French peasants watching the Bantam Brigade marching 
up the roads cried out in pity : " Cre nom de Dieu! UAn- 
gleterre envoie ses enfants!" They thought these little 
undersized men were boys from school. 

England and France, above all, must look to their 
natural physique. The best of their men, the flower of 
their youth, were cut down in swaths. The unfit, the 
"C 3" class, the poor weeds of city life, were left alive 
to be the fathers of the next generation. Only by a 
national system of physical training, and by a return to 
natural conditions of life, shall we restore the old stand- 
ards of our race and raise the splendor of our youth again. 
It is up to youth to defend its own rights to physical 
excellence, to raise itself to heroic heights, and, having 
gained that glory of manhood, to refuse in their souls to 
let it be destroyed again in the hard wastefulness of 
senseless wars. 

The youth of the new world that is coming need have 
no fear that peace will rob it of romance and adventure. 
The building of that new world upon the ruins of the 
old; the reshaping of social relations between classes 
and nations; the pursuit of spiritual truth and beauty; 
the killing of cruel and evil powers; the conquest of dis- 

407 



MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD 

ease; the resurrection of art and poetry and lovely 
handicrafts; the calling back of song and laughter to 
human life; the joy of flight made safe from death; the 
prolongation of human life by new discoveries of science; 
and the reconciling of life and death by faith re-estab- 
lished in the soul of the world — will be adventure enough 
to last, let us say, a thousand years from now. 

That is the chance of youth, standing now at the 
open door, wondering what there is to do and which 
way to take to meet the future. God! If I had youth 
again, I should like that good adventure, and take the 
chance. 



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THE END 



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